


Dream Of Me

by Jackson_Overland_Frost



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ! - Freeform, A ton of cameos from various fandoms, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fae!Peter Parker, Fae!Tony Stark, First Kiss, Fluff, Harley’s Mom’s Abusive Boyfriend, M/M, Not Christmas related tho, Parkner Secret Santa 2019, Primarily fluff tbh, Slow Burn, Spirited Away Movie, no beta we die like men, not that you need to know anything about it to understand this fic, tbh Fae! Everyone except for Harley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21963061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackson_Overland_Frost/pseuds/Jackson_Overland_Frost
Summary: When Harley Keener was five years old, his “dad” went to Seven-Eleven to get scratchers, and he must have won, because he never came back. When Harley Keener was eleven years old, a faerie had broken into his garage, introduced himself as “The Mechanic” enlisted his help in fixing his magic-mechanical armor, and left Harley with an unwavering belief in the supernatural.Now Harley’s seventeen, his mom just got a new boyfriend, said boyfriend fucking /sucks/, and Harley’s standing in the woods with a bag, about to step into a faerie circle, hoping to Hell that this works.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Tony Stark, Harley Keener/Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Loki & Thor (Marvel), Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 54
Kudos: 267





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Persephoneblackrose](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Persephoneblackrose).



> This turned out to be like twice as long as I ever wanted it to be, which is why I’m splitting it into two parts (also because it’s Christmas but I haven’t finished writing this yet.) I should be finished with part two sometime around New Years?? 
> 
> Merry Christmas Trinity. Hope you enjoy.

When Harley Keener was five years old, his “dad” went to Seven-Eleven to get scratchers, and he must have won, because he never came back. When Harley Keener was eleven years old, a faerie had broken into his garage, introduced himself as “The Mechanic” enlisted his help in fixing his magic-mechanical armor, and left Harley with an unwavering belief in the supernatural. When Harley Keener was fourteen years old, he set up a stand on the edge of the road, painted the word MECHANIC is big red letters on the wood, and fixed things every hour he wasn’t in school, from cars to pipes to laptops. 

At seventeen years old, Harley Keener was standing in the woods in front of a circle of mushrooms, bag full of clothes and supplies on his back, and no plan besides getting Abbie and himself  _ out _ in his head. Harley Keener could live with a mom who was never home- he understood that she had to earn a living, even with her shitty bar job. He understood that she was trying to take care of them in the only way she now could, instead of being home to cook and tuck them in and give them hugs. He understood because, if he had been in her place, he most likely would have done the same thing, because hugs and presence wouldn’t put food on the table, or buy a new coat for Abbie every year, who was in the middle of a growth spurt. Harley did  _ not _ understand how his mom could get a boyfriend, when she should have learned her lesson after “dad”, without asking he and Abbie how they felt about it first, and then Bring Him To Their  _ House _ . 

_ Not to mention _ , Harley had thought as he shielded Abbie with his own body, hoping beyond all hope that his mother would come home early for once, or even on time,  _ that this one is even worse than dad ever could have been.  _

Harley’s mom had met Tristan at her shitty bar job, not as a coworker, but as a customer. A fucking customer, which not only broke almost every rule of customer service Harley could think of, but also really said something about the kind of person that Tristan is- namely a middle aged, sleezy, sexist, alchoholic asshole- the very kind of person that makes his mom’s bar job so shitty to start off with. Harley straight up didn’t know about him until he moved into their house, with literally no warning at all. And within a week of Tristan not leaving for work until Harley had already gone to school, and coming home before Harley got back, essentially meaning that Tristan was there every moment that he was in his own house, Harley had a new adjective to describe Tristan with- infuriating as  _ fuck _ .

He. Watched porn. In the fucking living room. At the exact frame of time that Harley was arriving home from school. And then insisted on going through Harley’s backpack thoroughly, checking all his grades, getting a detailed summary of all his classes, seeing all his homework, notes, and school work, and then, once it was already dinner time, not letting him out the fucking door until he was done with all his homework, going to so as to physically restrain him to the chair. As if Harley hadn’t heard him jerking off on the shared and public couch barely a few minutes earlier, as if one of the hands that was shuffling through Harley’s backpack had not just been on his dick. 

On one particularly memorable instance, Tristan had been trying to teach him physics, as if Harley didn’t already have an A in the highest level offered at his school. It was already 1:00AM, he was tired as fuck and wanted to go to bed, had school the next day, and already knew the material. 

“Oh my god, Tristan. It’s already 1:00AM, I’m tired as fuck and want to go to sleep, I have school tomorrow, and I already know that material. I have a fucking A already, just let me go to sleep!”

And Tristan had stood up, grinned at him, and slapped him out of his chair. “You know what happens when you talk back to your betters, sunshine,” he had said as Harley touched the burning handprint on his cheek incredulously. Harley hadn’t thought Tristan would be brave enough to get physical without the alcohol in his system, but apparently he’d thought wrong. At least it wasn’t as bad as it usually was. “Go ahead and sleep, sugar. See if I’ll help you out next time.”  _ HA. As if Harley actually wanted his help.  _

  
  
  
  


Even six years later, Harley remembered exactly where the faerie circle where he’d last seen the Mechanic was. Of course he remembered. He lived in the middle of fucksville Tennessee, and the most interesting thing that had happened since then was that “single mother of two Ms. Keener finally gets a fucking boyfriend.”

And that brought us to now, Harley standing in front of a mushroom circle with a backpack full of clean underwear and his best screwdriver, hoping to make a deal with a faerie. If best came to best, it would be a faerie that he knew and was on good terms with, albeit one he hadn’t seen for a good six years. If worse came to worst, well, he didn’t particularly want to think about that right now. 

Harley tried one last time to think of a better plan, a more responsible plan, a plan with a smaller percent chance of failure. He stepped into the circle.

  
  
  
  


Immediately, a deep sense of regret washed over him, like standing under a rushing waterfall of knowing you’ve been an idiot. He had the urge to just turn around and walk right out of the circle and go home, to think of a different way. This was a mistake, and not one he would make ever again, now that he knew better. Starting forward, Harley began to do just that, to make his way out of the circle, to go home in time to make dinner. This was pointless, and he was stupid to even think that it would work, let alone that the Mechanic would come. The Mechanic could easily just have been a childhood dream, a hallucination, something his brain made up to explain the technology that his mother had given him as a surprise gift. Faeries weren’t real- of course they weren’t, they were just folklore, a fairytale, a made up story for little kids. 

But he couldn’t leave the circle. As soon as he tried to leave, the earth stung his feet like hot coals through his shoes, and the air became thick, like trying to push through whipped marshmallow fluff. 

“Leaving already?” A voice from behind him asked. “But you haven’t even said hello.”

Every thought of leaving flew from his head, and he spun around. The faerie standing just outside the circle was so obviously not human, stood out so starkly from the world, that Harley almost laughed. Of course, they was absolutely gorgeous, if you were into that sort of thing, and Harley was. The spirit’s nose and mouth were small, to make room for the eight eyes on a human shaped face. There were two main eyes where a human’s eyes would go, warm and brown and lined with kohl, and three pairs that were flat and white, one just below the main eye and two smaller pairs just above. 

At first Harley thought that the spirit was quite tall, having to look up in order to meet their eyes, but quickly realized that they were actually just floating about a foot above the ground. Their feet were bare, and they were wearing a dark red Roman style tunic, with a wispy sheer black cloak with silver-white embroidery which looked like spiderwebs. The cloak was clasped to the tunic at the shoulders, and had a wide hood, which was drawn up over their hair, so that Harley could only see their bangs, falling a bit into their face. 

“Hello then,” Harley said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud and brash in the near-silent dappled forest. 

The faerie giggled, a sound like a dozen tinkling wind chimes. “Hullo! Can I get your name, or?” They held out a hand, as if for a handshake. Harley didn’t take it, and unfazed, they drew their hand back. 

“You can call me the Mechanic,” Harley told them, recalling the exact same words that were spoken to him years ago. He knew better than to give a fae his name; he’d done his research, and he’d rather not be enslaved for eternity, thank you very much. And then, because he was curious- “He/him pronouns, please.”

A far cry from their earlier giggle, the spirit burst out laughing, clutching their stomach, head thrown back. Their hood slipped from their head, releasing short messy brown curls. 

“Ha! Ok sweetheart, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. It’s impolite to impersonate someone without their permission, especially in their own land, you know? That’s great through, Mr. Stark’s gonna think it’s hilarious. You can call me Spider, okay?” They gestured to their face. “It’s easy enough to remember. And uh, he/him pronouns for me as well. Wow, it’s been ages since I’ve had to say that to anyone. You humans and your labels.”

There was a pause, Spider tugging awkwardly on the hem of his tunic. Harley took the opportunity to take a deep breath and calm himself. He had barely spoken, but he couldn’t help but feel like he had just finished a test he didn’t even know he had been taking. There was no hint as to whether he had passed or failed, but the sense of closure and feeling that he could put whatever had just happened behind him drifted across him and clung to his mind like dew. 

“I want to make a deal,” he said. 

“Ok,” said Spider. Another pause. “So are you going to tell me about it, or?”

Harley breathed in, breathed out. “I want my sister and I to be safe,” he said. And then, realizing how vague that was, blurted, “But not like, by killing anyone that might cause us harm. I just want us to be able to leave and live somewhere without being financially unstable, somewhere that we can feel secure. Away from Mom and Tristan.”

Spider landed on the ground, and Harley could see that the spirit was actually an inch or two shorter than him. “You’re asking for a lot,” he said mildly. He had scars on his hands, Harley suddenly noticed, criss-crossing up his arms, and around his ankles. Covering some of the scars on his forearms was a flowering tattoo, thorny vines interspersed with small red and white flowers. As he watched, a series of Almost self consciously, Spider scratched at them, and Harley looked away and back at the faerie’s face. 

“Can you do it though?” He asked. 

“Ah- well, yes,” Spider said, hesitantly. “I’m going to need something of yours in return though.”

“Not my name,” Harley said immediately. He crossed his arms over his chest defensively, and curled in on himself a little. 

Immediately, Spider put his hands up and vehemently shook his head, his bangs falling farther into his face. He brushed them out of his eyes impatiently before locking his hands behind his back. “No. No of course not. Your name is worth far more than that in a deal, and we couldn’t have me in your debt, can we now? Keep your name; plenty else that you possess has value. Your words, your time,” Spider grinned at him shyly. “Your beauty, your knowledge. How about, hmm…”

While Spider hummed to himself, seemingly thinking, Harley shifted his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. As he did so, he spared a glance at his watch, and noticed that none of the hands were moving- none of the hands  _ had _ moved. So either his watch was broken, or stepping into the circle had stopped time somehow. He wouldn’t put that beyond it, as one thing almost every story agreed on was that time moves differently in other realms than it does here. 

“Your nights then,” said Spider, suddenly, and with a vague little wiggle, like he was rolling his shoulders back. Trying to stand up straighter. 

“What?”

“Your nights! I won’t take you when you aren’t ready, of course, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you, so how about you come visit me every night when you fall asleep until our deal is complete? It would be no time of yours wasted, and you will still wake up fully rested in the morning.”

Harley slowly began to nod his head, but paused. “What if at some point I want to end our deal? And what do you mean, ‘when the deal is complete’? How do I know you won’t just take me every night and never fulfill your end?”

“If at any time you want to deal to be off, you can simply not fulfill your end by missing a night of sleep, or not falling asleep until the sun is up, which no longer counts as night time. If you miss even one night, the deal is off- I won’t fulfill my end, and you need not fulfill yours. And if you ever suspect me of not striving to complete me end of the bargain, than you can feel free to not complete your end. An equal trade, if you will.” He grinned, and Harley could see the sharpness of his teeth, like a blade. 

Okay, so Harley knew he should be looking for loopholes and being smart and generally  _ not _ making an unpredictable deal with a faerie he just met, but honestly, who ever said that Harley was smart? Plenty of people, actually, but they were all liars. 

“Alright,” Harley told him. 

“You agree? Lovely!” Spider stepped, for the first time, into the circle, making Harley flinch backwards. “But we still do have to seal the deal, I’m afraid.”

“Right. Uh, and how would we go about doing that?”

“A handshake will do, sweetheart,” he said, and for the second time that night he held out his hand for a handshake. Hesitantly, Harley reached out and took it in his own, and they shook hands, firmly. Spider’s hand were warm, and the thorns of his tattoos, which had grown downwards to curl around his fingers, prickled against his palms. He let go, and wiped his sweaty hands against his jeans, while Spider simply took a step back with a small smile. 

“That should do it,” Spider said with a nod. He winked. “Sleep early tonight, okay? I’ll see you soon!” 

And when Harley blinked, Spider had vanished.

  
  
  
  


It took three tries for Harley to get the key in the lock, his other hand gripping the straps of his backpack to keep it from shaking so much. He hadn't seen Tristan’s car in the driveway, and was hoping that he had managed to get home first. Abbie was already home though, judging by the fact that her backpack was on the ground near the door and that it was almost five already. He could hear her in the kitchen, so he dropped his keys off and went to go meet her. 

Abbie was sitting on the kitchen counter with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands and her earbuds in, but she took them out when she saw Harley walk in. She was wearing her favorite scarf- soft, and a creamy white color with lavender flowers- and it clashed horribly with her dark red sweatshirt. He mentally tensed, but got out his own mug, filled it with milk, and put it in the microwave. Abbie unplugged her earbuds and put them in her sweatshirt pocket along with her phone, and then just watching Harley in silence as he took chocolate chips and cinnamon out of the cabinets. 

“Where’s Tristan?” He asked. Even at normal volume Harley’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet kitchen. He refused to lower his voice. 

“Out,” Abbie said. Her voice was hoarse, even after the chocolate. It was nothing less than what Harley was expecting- hot cocoa or tea was Abbie’s calming ritual, put together with sitting on a surface that was not meant to be sat on. Something had happened. “Where have you been?”  _ Where were you when I needed you? _

Her scarf shifted and Harley spotted newer red marks in the shape of handprints, overlaying the older purpling ones. He seethed with anger. 

“Working on getting us out of here. He was drunk already?”

“When he got home. He suddenly got up and drove off like twenty minutes ago.” The faerie circle was a twenty minute walk away, and Harley breathed a little easier knowing that Spider was already working on his end of the bargain. “Hope he gets arrested for drunk driving.”

Harley laughed painfully and she smiled, fiddling with the tassels on the ends of her scarf. He looked at the smile, and not for the first time, especially recently, thought that he would do anything to keep his sister smiling. And that anything was finally becoming a tangible action and not just a pointless ideal. 

“Even if he doesn’t, I’ll get us out of here,” Harley reiterated. He shot another look at the scarf, and seethed some more. “I’ll get us out no matter what.”

Abbie eyed his backpack, and Harley slid his arms out of the straps and dropped it on the kitchen floor. “Sure you’d get us both out?” She asked dryly. She gestured to the sleeve of his favorite jacket poking out. 

He turned his entire body towards her and put his mug down, placing his hands on the counter next to her. 

“I  _ will _ get us both out. The bag was for emergencies, in case my plan went wrong, and even then I could never leave you. I promise. Trust me, please, Abbie?”

And Abbie was fourteen, and loved her brother just as desperately as he loved her, and Harley cried inside when she spoke. “Of course I trust you Harley. I always will.” 

They embraced, and Harley pretended he was crying for any reason other than the fact that he might have to break that trust.

“So whatever this mysterious plan is, it went well I’m assuming?” Abbie broke away and took a large sip of her hot chocolate. 

“Yeah, it did. Made me really fucking tired though, so I might take an early night after dinner.” 

She undid the scarf and draped it across her legs, and Harley did his best to look at her face and not her neck. Abbie pretended she couldn't see him failing at doing so. 

“I think I will too. Here’s to hoping Tristan doesn’t come back tonight?”

“Here’s too,” Harley said, and they clinked their mugs together before emptying them. 

  
  
  
  


Harley blinked open his eyes to a sunny green expanse of cropped grass lawn speckled with tiny colorful wildflowers in every color he could imagine, and then some more. His gaze roamed up the hill to a huge sleek building of white steel and concrete and glass, surrounded on every side with forest. On one wall there was a large silver symbol that looked like a stylized letter A inside of a circle, like an eclipse. 

And then his attention flew to the figure dressed in skin-tight red and black pretty much flying down the hill towards him. From his wrists came white webs that attached to the flat metallic hexagonal drones that were drifting around the place, swinging him across the grassy expanse. Spider dropped to the ground in front of him, letting Harley get a better look at the weird outfit that he was sporting- mostly red and black spandex, with eight flat white eyes on the mask, and a spider emblem made of metal plating that stretched its legs across Spider’s chest, making a sort of stylized armor. The red parts of the “costume” had ridged black webbing patterns stretched across it, and the spider emblem was accented with a golden metal Harley had never seen before, which made a reappearance in the wrist-gauntlet things that the webs had shot out of, as well the edges of his boots. 

After the two or so seconds Harley had to take that in, Spider pressed the emblem in the center of the suit and the metal essentially melted into the pattern, and the entire costume turned to fabric. The mask dripped off the side of his face and turned into a hood, most of the web patterning disappeared, the boots became red sneakers and the gauntlets turned into wide golden bracelets. Within twenty seconds Spider could be seen smirking at Harley’s gaping face, now wearing a comfortably loose red hoodie with his black and gold emblem on the front, black skinny jeans, and red converse. Harley couldn’t shake off the feeling of familiarity- it had looked eerily similar to the way the Mechanic’s armour had dissolved into an impeccably tailored suit all those years ago.

“...You have a magic-mechanical suit?” Harley asked, slowly putting himself back together. He vaguely hoped that the terminology that he was spouting after six years was still correct. 

Spider’s smug grin morphed into one of mild surprise. “You know what a magic-mechanical suit is?” And then the look in his eyes shifted to understanding. “Right, of course. You know Mister Stark.”

“Who now?” Harley asked. His eyes drifted from Spider’s and wandered once more around to the large building in front of him and the drones flying around. 

“The Mechanic,” Spider clarified. “You tried to impersonate him when we met, remember? It really wasn’t that long ago.”

Before Harley could respond to that in a hopefully cool and snarky way, Spider rushed on. “Anyways, I really clearly was not thinking straight when I invited you here because you are human, obviously, and bringing a human to a place inhabited pretty much only by spirits was a terrible idea. So haha yeah, but I have thought of a solution so hopefully this will all turn out fine and you won’t be boiled alive in a pot, or set on fire, or have your eyes gouged out. Come with me!”

And Spider grabbed his wrist and began to pull him towards the building with near inhuman strength and quickly enough that Harley had to half-jog in order to keep up, continuing to ramble. The thorns of his tattoos pricked at Harley’s skin, not sharp enough to draw blood, but enough to hurt. 

“So if you want to stick around you’ll need a way to keep everyone from trying to fry and eat your heart, and the easiest and most foolproof way would be to get you a job here so that way you have employee protection. Mister Stark is pretty strict about not physically or psychologically harming your coworkers, and he has the power to destroy any customer who tries to injure you, so that’s our best bet here.”

“Can’t I just claim guest rights?” Harley panted, racking his brain for ways to survive in the faerie world. He would really rather not have his heart, uh, fried and eaten, if it were all the same. 

“Guest rights are temporary, so it’d be better if we could get you something long term,” Spider said, not even out of breath. “But we can’t just go ask Mister Stark to give you a job because I don’t have that much pull with him at the moment, unfortunately. I’m pretty sure he’s still pissed at me for breaking his coffee machine this morning, so we might not be on speaking terms for the next week or so, or at least until he takes the time to fix it or get a new one. Missus Potts is going to be looking for me though, so you’re going to have to go down to Happy yourself.” 

Spider yanked him behind a bush, almost dislocating his arm from his socket, just in time for a dark skinned spirit with dark blue feathers for hair walked by. His voice dropped to a whisper, and once the spirit passed them he pulled Harley out and back onto the path up the hill. They were almost at the building now, so Spider’s voice stayed low as he spoke. 

“Happy will give you a job if you tell him that I sent you, he may seem grumpy but he’s soft enough on the inside to take pity on a human like you. Plus, I’m sure he likes me at least a little bit, otherwise he wouldn’t answer all my calls. He owes me a favor too, for dating my aunt- okay hold your breath as we go inside.”

Harley was pulled through a hallway and straight through another door back outside into a sort of tiny indoor garden. The room was about the size of a walk-in closet, the walls seemed to be made of greenery, the ceiling was a skylight the shouldn’t have been possible considering how low it was, and the ground was hardwood. 

“What is this place,” Harley asked, staring at the flowers growing out of the moss of the walls. 

“Heh, sorry its so small,” Spider said, smiling softly. “It’s the closest safe space here. Safe for us, anyhow- it’s mine, so nobody can come in and bother us without my permission. Okay. Directions to get to Happy.” And he leaned in and pressed his forehead to Harley’s. 

  
  
  
  


A series of images swam through his head. Himself, walking back down the hallway and past the door they had just come through, back straight with a confidence he didn’t feel. Not-Harley took the elevator at the end of the hall down to the floor labeled “-4”, and the images wavered and then changed. -4 was clean and well lit, with yellow walls and tiled floors, like a hospital or school. Every few feet there was a wooden door with a name plate on it and a long window just above the door handle. His vision sped down the hallway in zoomed in on a door made of metal, and the window was narrow and set into the very top of the door, so that light was let in but you couldn’t see through it unless you were Just That Tall, or had some kind of assistance. His vision went through the door, going intangible, and showed a dark wooden desk piled high with papers, but with nobody sitting in it. The golden nameplate sitting on the desk was engraved with the word ‘Happy’, along with a black frowny face scrawled at the end with a marker. Just two dots and a downward facing curve; it looked like it was done by a child. 

He opened up his eyes again, staring into Spider’s- who were barely a few centimeters away from his, their foreheads still pressed together. Blue eyes stared into crystal chocolate brown ones for a few frozen seconds before Harley started to laugh, prompting the other boy to start laughing too. He slumped forward until his chin was hooked over Spider’s shoulder, still giggling, and arms wrapped loosely around his lower back. 

“Pffft, why did you start laughing, sweetheart?” Spider took several deep breaths that Harley was almost certain he didn’t actually need. 

Harley snorted, tried to control his own breathing, and failed. “Was that frowny face you? Also stop calling me sweetheart, it’s weird.”

“That was Morgan, and I’m frankly offended that you think I would ever do something so childish.” Spider stuck out his tongue at him, making him laugh again. “Also, you didn’t tell me your name or even give me something to call you, so I’m not sure what I was meant to do,  _ sweetheart _ .” He grinned foxily, and Harley suddenly understood why a word that meant  _ slyly intelligent  _ was also slang for  _ sexually alluring _ . In other words, he was completely screwed, totally enamoured, and totally, definitely, not a furry. Jury’s still out on monster fucker though. 

Through sheer force of will, a miracle from on high, a pinch of magic, and a fuck ton of luck, Harley’s face didn’t go red at all from his most recent revelation, and his voice came out even and even a bit teasing when he spoke. “Don’t be a bitch, Spi. I’m doing my very best not to get enslaved for the rest of my life out here.”

“Spi?”

“You don’t like it?” Harley furrowed his eyebrows, suddenly nervous. It was instinct at this point to nickname his friends, but he was willing to do his best not to in order to not upset this particular faerie. 

“I didn’t say that.” Spider gifted him a small smile. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it. That’s just not the usual nickname people give me when I use this pseudonym. Most people use Spidey or something.”

“Well, I won’t use it if you don’t like it-”

Spider shook his head. “No no, you can use it. Just surprised, it’s not a big deal. So, ah, what should I call you? Or I could keep using ‘sweetheart’, if you wanted?” 

Harley was sure some form of red had showed up on his face this time, but Spider didn’t react so he didn’t either. “Uhhhhhh…… hnnnn…” he looked around desperately for inspiration. “Mmmmm….. Bio?”

“Bio? Where did that come from?” Spider asked, justifiably confused. 

“I dunno. I just saw the moss and flowers and stuff and ya know, biology. I guess it’s the one thing I don’t know much about, and you don’t know my real name, so Bio is a mystery to all of us!” Harley stifled his giggles to his own bad joke.

With a face of disappointment, Spider blinked at him in silence. Eight times. Once with each of his eyes. Finally he spoke. “You know what, you’re shit at coming up with names. Until you come up with a better one I’m calling you Sky. Or sweetheart- depends on the scenario.”

“Well, now you have to tell me where Sky came from!”

“Well, it’s faerie sounding, isn’t already taken by somebody like the first thing you tried to make me call you, and it’s gender neutral so it doesn’t reveal anything about who you are.” Spider waved a hand towards Harley’s face. “Also, have you seen your own eyes ever in your life? Because they look like the reflection of a cloudless sky on a summer's day in a still pool of unfathomably deep water. The abyss multiplied by two.”

_ And he said it so matter-of-factly too _ , Harley thought to himself.  _ Shit- I can practically feel the blood rushing to my face.  _

After a few moments of silence, Spider stood up. “Well, you should get going then. I’m going to change out of my suit into proper clothing, comfortable as this is, and then go see Missus Potts.”

Harley coughed self consciously and looked down, inspecting the woodgrain of the floor. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see you later?”

“Yup! See you soon.” Spider shot him a cheerful grin, and waved his fingers over his shoulder. “Biya!” 

  
  
  
  


The metal door loomed far more ominously in real life than it ever did in the vision Spider had given him. Harley knocked hesitantly on the door, not wanting to go inside without permission, and the door squeaked open on it’s own. A man wearing a suit and tie sat at the desk, scribbling something onto a piece of paper with one hand rested on the handle of a plain white mug. An identical man rummaged through a bookshelf near the desk, occasionally pulling out a book to flip through before either putting it back or setting in onto a growing pile on the floor. The pile of papers on the desk was the same as in the vision, but they were being sorted through by yet another identical looking man, who handed another paper to the man at the desk whenever he finished one. 

When Harley cleared his throat quietly to catch the attention of one of the men, they all started, and were pulled, as if by a string, into the one who sat at the desk. His head jerked up and he peered at Harley curiously. 

“A human. What are you doing here?”

“Ahh, Spider sent me? To get a job here? He said to go to Happy and ask him for a job, and that you owed him a favor—Spider, I mean. If you are Happy. Are you Happy?”

“Yes, that’s me.” Happy looked away from him with a sigh and took a sip from his cup—it smelled like coffee, but Harley could’ve be sure. “Getting you a job ain’t an easy feat, kid, even with Spider behind you. Not to mention the fact that you’re a human, which makes you a lot more vulnerable. Stark’s going to want to know he’s making the right decision, putting all that effort into protecting you, before he hires you. If you’re friends with Spider, I can put in a good word for you, but debt or not he’ll owe me for it.”

Just then, the door opened again and a woman stepped in, holding a stack of Tupperware containers. She had long brown hair and similarly colored eyes, and there was a carnation tucked behind one ear.

“Hey, I brought your lunch down for you.” She completely ignored Harley as she came through the office and set the food down on Happy’s desk. 

“Great, I appreciate it. Boy, this is May. May, this is the human the kid sent me, says he needs a job. Could you bring him up to Stark for me? I’d owe you, but better you than Spidey.” Happy slid the food across the table towards him, and exchanged it for his now empty mug, which May took and proceeded to vanish, seeming to place it down in mid air between the folds of space, so that Harley couldn’t see it anymore. 

“Course,” she said, and finally turned to Harley. “So, do I get your name, or do I just called you ‘Boy’ like Happy has taken to doing?” 

Harley smiled, but didn’t take her hand. “You can call me Sky, ma’am.”

She withdrew her hand with a shrug and a small laugh. “Clever. One of Spidey’s for sure. I can see why he’d taken a liking to you. Follow me, won’t you?”

He nodded at her, thanked Happy, and followed her out the door and down the hallway. They went back up in the elevator, and May selected the highest floor while Harley fidgeted silently in the corner. As the elevator went up, May warned him that this stop was just the highest the elevator would go, and that they would have to take a different one in order to get to the Mechanic. Surprisingly quickly, they reached their destination, and the doors slid open to reveal a clean white hallway lined with doors and huge windows. Through these, Harley could see people bustling around cauldrons of bubbling liquid, scooping powder into clockwork birds that flew around everywhere, even a tree growing far larger than any tree had a right to grow, with faeries in white lab coats on ladders harvesting its fruit. The hallway he was in was busy as well, faeries walking through doors into what, according to the windows, should have been thin air, but instead were laboratories or rooms of office cuticles he could only glimpse through doorways. 

And everything was brightly lit by floating balls of white light, like incorporeal lightbulbs. Down below, Harley saw one scientist raise a hand and call one down to him as he fiddled with what looked like an apple made of circuit boards. In the air nearby, a spirit with three pairs of dragonfly-like wings, compound eyes, and feathery antennae poking out of their blond hair chased a mechanical hawk through the air, which was chasing a smaller mechanical sparrow, which in turn was chasing a shiny buzzing robotic beetle. Harley flinched as they seemed to crash into the glass, and gaped when he saw them on the other side of the hallways, completely unharmed, as if the hallways wasn’t even there. 

Most of the spirits didn’t seem to notice him as they walked, so he let himself stare around at his surroundings, as well as the spirits themselves. Some of the spirits weren’t even humanoid, instead looking like giant two-tailed wolves, or tall creatures with willow-branch fingers and twelve piercing eyes and pointed beak. One especially strange creature, which sat at a desk in a lab coat, looked like an arsenic green scaled rabbit, which two full sized human hands sticking out of it’s waist typing at a computer. Others were unsettling because of how human they looked, enough that if Harley saw them on the street at home, wouldn’t even look twice at. The only thing that told them apart were small things, those that were easily hidden, and those that weren’t. A skinny redhead in a leather jacket with reptilian yellow eyes, easily hidden by a pair of sunglasses, or a fair-skinned boy whose black hair waved as if he were underwater. Those who were unsettling because it would have been so easy to mistake them for human. 

May led him through a laboratory, slowing down to avoid the occasional puddle of spilled coffee or mysterious glowing liquid with a faerie frantically cleaning it up, and then up a flight of glass stairs and down a corridor with the telltale sliver elevator doors at the end. The door opened before she even pressed the button, and as if on instinct, she pulled Harley behind her and out of sight. Two humanoid fae had been taking a large metal cart up to this floor and they exited the elevator, going immediately to one of the labs. Next came a spirit that Harley would have thought was just a human, albeit one with very, very good hair. He had dark skin, and was wearing a lab coat, and had no visible non human traits. When he saw May he grinned, and Harley was surprised to notice that he also had perfectly straight teeth, like a military cemetary. May cringed a little when she saw him, trying to hide Harley. 

Turning slightly so that her back was to the elevator, she pushed Harley into the elevator. “Just press the highest button and ask to go to Mister Stark’s office,” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth before beaming back at the other spirit and letting the doors close behind her. “Mr. Scientist! It’s good to see you. It’s been a while.”

  
  
  
  


There was still a scientist in the elevator with him, a pale skinned and brown haired man with rectangular glasses, wearing a lab coat. He was fidgeting with his fingers, and the skin around his knuckles was dimpled and green, the color also stretching a little way up his wrists and arms. He didn’t look up as Harley stumbled and righted himself before righting himself and looking to the buttons, pressing the highest number—floor 67. Harley could have sworn the building was no more than four or five floors when he’d seen it from the outside, but having now seen the inside as well, he didn’t bother questioning it. 

“Where would you like to go, Sky?” came an Irish sounding voice, suddenly, from the ceiling. 

Harley jumped, almost falling into the wall. ‘Um, what? How do you know who I am?”

“You told Ms. May what you would like to go by in one of the offices, Sky. Where would you like to go?”

The man in the corner spoke up. “Stark’s office, please.” The elevator started moving upwards. “Thanks FRIDAY.” He made eye contact with Harley and nodded at him with a small smile. “You can call me Dr. Banner. It’s only fair that if I know who you are, you know what I go by as well.”

“It’s good to meet you, Dr. Banner.” He smiled back. “I go by Sky, though I guess you already knew that.”

The elevator stopped, and the door opened into a small room lined with armchairs, like the waiting room at a hospital, minus the weird medical posters on the walls. “This is your stop,” Dr. Banner told him. “Good luck with Stark. FRIDAY, take me back down to R&D, please.”

“Thank you, Dr. Banner.” Harley said as the elevators closed. The faerie only smiled back. 

  
  
  
  


Harley walked to the door and raised his hand to knock on the door, but hesitated. What if the Mechanic was meeting with someone already? But it wouldn’t do to just sit in the room and wait for someone to call for him—after all, who would? The Mechanic wouldn’t know he was here. Mind made up, he rapped on the door, only for it to open inwards as soon as his skin touched the wood. 

“Come on in,” a familiar voice said from inside. “I’ve been expecting you.” 

The office was large and scattered, shelves of books and tools and trinkets alike lined the walls, and a large desk with piles of seemingly unorganized papers was set against one wall. A chipped mug held pencils and quills and reed pens alike, and a huge window at the back of the grounds showed a gorgeous view of the grounds. There were two doors, one of which was open and showed a sort of sitting room with a huge rug and unlit fireplace, and the other was closed and locked. 

“Hey old man,” Harley called, sauntering into the room. Maybe if he acted confident enough he would eventually feel it, especially with the Mechanic. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Hey Junior. It is fancy, huh? You, seeing me here. In the faerie world, in my compound, in my office. Why are you here, again?” The Mechanic looked the same as he did six years ago, in Harley’s garage. 

“Eh. Thought I’d come visit an old friend. Came up here to ask where my warm welcome was. I’ve had a look around your compound though, or whatever you’ve been calling it, and it’s actually pretty cool. I can see why you haven’t left this place to visit me, with all your magic and fun tech.”

“Keener, why the hell are you here. How did you find this place? You should be in the human world, it isn’t safe for you here,” he furrowed his brows, either confused or concerned. Harley couldn’t tell. 

“Geez, Mechanic. Trying to get rid of me already? I thought we had a  _ connection _ .” Harley grinned as he played his trump card. 

“Bringing that up already, huh? Alright, what do you want.”

“Have you seen this place? I want an internship, old man.”

“Your coworkers are going to want to eat you, you little shit. Go back home, no one’s teaching you shit here, and especially not magic.” 

“Then let me hang around, Stark. Don’t you have any goddamn employee protection in this facility? Remember, you owe me,” Harley weedled. “Don’t tell me you forgot our  _ connection _ .”

“Your name ain’t worth that much, Junior,” The Mechanic told him, but Harley could tell he was about to give him. 

“Come on, old man. You don’t even have to pay me!”

“You’re terribly, Keener. I’ll pay, won’t do to owe you more. Come here.” The Mechanic waved a hand through the air and all the papers flew up and around. He plucked a packet of papers held together with a paperclip from the air before letting them settle back into marginally neater piles. “Here’s you NDAs, arrangements for pay, employee benefits, etcetera etcetera, just sign here. Your full name.”

Harley paused. “And you promise no one but you will see my name?” 

The Mechanic laughed. “That’s what you’re worried about? I can promise that I will not show your name to anyone, and I can promise that nobody I don’t absolutely trust will see it. Can’t guarantee anything else.”

There was a fountain pen set next to the contract, so Harley signed his full name on the dotted line with a grin at the Mechanic’s shocked face. 

“You aren’t going to read it over? No staring between the lines for hidden meanings and tricks? No making sure I’m not about to steal your soul and being?”

“Enough fae have looked it over and signed if before me for me to trust that it’s fine. You were way too reluctant for me to sign, and I didn’t give you enough time to make me a whole new contract. Thanks for the job, old man.” He slid the packet back across the desk and turned around to leave the office, when Spider came bursting through the door.

“Hey Mister Stark— oh shit, Sky? What are you doing— Dad,  _ what _ are you doing with my things? You said you’d leave my stuff alone!”

“Underoos, kid, I straight up have no idea what you’re talking about. Junior was just getting a job, alright. He’s signed his contract, and now he’s leaving.” 

“Whatthe FUCK!? He’s signed a CONTRACT??” 

The Mechanic shot Harley a pointed look, so he put his hands in the air and backed out of the room, Spider not seeming to notice him. As he closed the door behind, he could still hear raised voices, and winced. Hopefully those two would be okay. 

He pressed the elevator button and the doors opened immediately. Fidgeting awkwardly, he stepped inside and looked up at the ceiling. 

“Uhh, FRIDAY?”

“Sky, what did you need?” A pause. “Boss has just notified me that you are to be called Junior from now on, I apologize.”

Harley giggled to himself at the thought of the Mechanic calling on Friday like that to prove a point in an argument. “Could you please bring me to somewhere quiet, please?”

“Of course, Junior. Would you like to go to one of the empty offices, the library—”

“The library,” Harley grinned in excitement at the chance of getting to read faerie books. 

“If I may, Junior, although the library is quiet, it is quite busy right now, and I would advise you to go there some other time, especially as you are new. The gardens are currently empty and should be for some time.”

With a sigh, Harley agreed. “Alright, take me to the gardens. If you don’t mind me asking, what would be a better time to go to the library?”

“Of course I do not mind, Junior. I am here to serve. The library is typically empty during the day, as well as the early evenings and mornings.”

“Okay, thank you,” Harley said with a smile as the elevator doors opened. 

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t for the elevator doors to open straight into the outdoors. The garden was expansive, far more than what he would have thought could fit in the grounds of the steel and glass building he had first saw in the forest. Space, as he had seen, clearly did not work the way he thought it should here, however. The gardens themselves were beautiful, sprawling expanses of grass and trees, overwhelmingly green. It looked less like a carefully trimmed garden and more like a meadow of wildflowers, framed with swoops of flowering trees and a burbling stream. Dragonflies fluttered from place to place, and a gust of wind blew across the yellow-petaled wildflowers. Benches and the occasional gazebo were scattered across the landscape, for anyone that wanted a bit of shade or a seat under a roof or tree. Gravel paths wound their way through the artfully grown landscape, under weeping willow-esque trees that blossomed with tiny lavender flowers, and behind concrete benches in front of the water. 

Everything was lit up by the floating balls of light, as well as black lanterns set on the sides of the paths. Lightning bugs blinked at each other as they flew around the tall grass, and the dragonflies’ wings glowed with luminesence as they zipped across the water. The moon was full and bright, and Harley couldn’t see the fluorescent lights of the compound anywhere. When he had been inside, he hadn’t even noticed that even in the faerie world it was night time as well. In the soil was small glowing specks, and the veins of the plants glowed pale green. Everything that was alive glowed, and so Harley was able to see as well as if it had been day. The elevator doors he had stepped out of were standing on their own, not attached to anything, let along the elevator. 

The stream itself lead to a white gazebo with a floor that lowered in the middle, shifting from wood to a perfectly smooth cream colored stone. In the center was a sort of round stone well, also perfectly smooth, from which the stream bubbled up and overflowed, spouting high into the air before wetting the stones and keeping them cool, before flowing out and back into the stream. Or, well, it should have. Instead, the well was completely empty, and Harley could hear the sound of water rushing by below, completely ignoring the empty fountain. A little over a half dozen inches from where the surface of the water should have been was a thin copper pipe, which led straight down to the water pump, a few feet underwater. On the sides of the stone, leading into the well, was a set of tarnished silver rungs, going down to the pump, which was really only a couple feet down. If Harley had just sat on the edge and jumped, he would have made it easily. 

“If only I had my tools and shit on me,” Harley mused out loud. “I could probably fix it. Maybe I’ll ask Spider if he has anyth—” he cut himself off as his mechanic bag, in a shower of sparks, appeared on the steps to the gazebo. When he went over to check the bag, it was completely identical to his one back home, down to the pins on the front and the two tiny holes worn in the back. However, where ever he had written his name on his tools or the bag itself, it was replaced with  _ Sky _ in pale blue lighting. “Huh,” he said to himself. “Useful.”

  
  
  
  


Harley washed his hands free of silt in the now almost full pool of water. One of the balls of light fluttered above the pool, letting him see how dirty his hands still were. The pump was a bit different than the ones back home, and it had taken some finagling to take it apart and put it back together, and it didn’t seem to run on electricity so it probably worked on pure magic, but it wasn’t too difficult. The most impressive part wasn’t the fountain itself, which was basic but instead how caked the impeller was with silt and dirt and dead leaves. And all of it a coated in crackling rust. He didn’t know why nobody had cleaned it out for that long. It hadn’t broken beyond repair, at least, as it had been submerged for the whole time. 

“Hullo Sky,” came May’s voice from behind him. “I’ve been looking for you, the suns about to come up so everyone’s getting ready for bed. Oh, hey! You got the fountain working again.”

Harley jumped and spun around, but relaxed as soon as he saw who it was. “Huh? Yeah, I needed something to do. Is it okay that I did that without permission?” May nodded, and he picked up his back and slung it around his shoulders. “Why hasn’t anyone cleaned it out before me? It’s pretty easy to clean, but it seemed like nobody had cleaned it out for a really long time.”

“That fountain has been broken for quite a while. Some idiot kid was playing around with the magical effects of iron, and when he got in trouble for having it he came and dumped into this fountain. The Mechanic fired him before he found out about the fountain, and by the time the stream had washed away any traces of iron so that we could actually touch the stream and such again, the fountain had already stopped working. Nobody’s wanted to fix it since they knew it’d be clogged with iron. I guess you aren’t affected by iron since you’re a human, though.”

“Really?” Harley looked at his hands and shoved them back under the water, scrubbing them a little harder. “I didn’t even notice it was iron I was touching.”

“Geez,” May said, suprised. “You’re so normal, sometimes I forget you’re even human. And then you go around and say something like  _ that _ . It’s crazy that you wouldn’t notice that you were touching iron, of all things, like you’d think the immense pain and feeling that your hands are stuck in a vat of acid and about to burn and fall off, gloves or not, would be a dead giveaway, but no.”

“That’s what it feels like?” Harley shook his hands out and wiped them on his jeans. He pulled on his socks and shoes that he had left on the steps and followed May as they walked back to the elevator. Sure enough, the sun could be seen peeking out from the horizon, and the lanterns were starting to turn off. 

“That and worse,” May told him, not even turning around. “And worst of all, plain iron won’t kill you, so in some ways it’s worse than the enchanted stuff. It’s arguably the worst weapon anyone can use against a faerie. Hey, the work quarters please, FRIDAY.”

“Wow.” The elevators started moving upwards, and Harley shoved his hands in his pockets, scuffing his feet against the floor. “I can see why nobody’s cleaned it out then. Good thing I’m around. Uh, speaking of, am I the only human around here?”

“Nah,” May said with a smile. “There’s actually two or three besides you. Not a lot considering there’s over a thousand spirits working here, but you aren’ t the only one. They aren’t well respected, but they are pretty important around these parts, particularly for handling stuff fae and spirits can’t touch. Spirits are better than fae, but they still can’t touch iron, and a lot of them can’t touch salt as well. Lots of spirits have their own weaknesses as well. You’ve met one of them already, actually— Carlos is a scientist here, one of the janitors is a human, and she’s called in specifically for any forbidden material incidents. I’ve seen her around but I’m not sure what she’s called. I haven’t seen any others around, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

“Thanks May,” Harley told her as the doors opened. 

The work quarters weren’t large, and simply looked like a very long room filled with beds. The beds were backed up to the far wall from the elevator, and on either side of the elevator doors were comfortable red armchairs. Directly across from the doors was a set of screen doors that led out onto a balcony that, as far as Harley could tell, stretched the entire length of the room. There were doors just to the right of where he was standing that he assumed led to another similar room. 

May led him across the room to one of the beds and popped a tablet into the water that immediately began to fizz. “I talked to Spider before coming to find you, and he told me to have you drink this and try to go to sleep. You must be exhausted.”

“Yeah, I am. Thank you so much. Thank Spider for me too, alright?” Harley gulped down the liquid, which tasted like fizzy soymilk, with the sweetening added and everything. 

“I will,” she said. Harley laid down and immediately fell asleep. May waited as he dissolved away in a silent burst of sparks before changing into her own pajamas to get ready to go to bed herself. 

  
  
  
  


Harley heard the lock on Abbie’s door click, and he gave a mental sigh of relief. Something about that must have shown in his face though, as Tristan’s smile spread eerily. He was drunk again, but instead of making him angry like it usually did, the drinking made him malicious and cheerfully cruel, swaying and unsteady on his feet. It was almost worse than the anger. Instead of Tristan’s face going red and a snarl growing on his face as he threatened them with a broken beer bottle, he had advanced on them slowly, a thick wooden rolling pin in one hand, and one of his belts in the other. 

“Hey, Sunshine,” Tristan said, grinning slowly as he came up on the door. Harley shivered, but didn’t move from his position guarding Abbie’s bedroom. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”

“...What’s funny?” Harley asked hesitantly. He backed up further into the door. 

“You know, Emily never told me that she had kids when she asked me to move in. She introduced me to you two and expected me to love you the same way I loved her, as if it wouldn’t make me detest her as much as I detest you and your idiot sister. And she, at least, is as easy on the eyes as your mother is. Now, like I was saying, it’s funny, isn’t it?”

Harley narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brows, clutching his arms over his stomach nervously. He heard the sound of furniture scraping inside the room, and hoped that he was giving Abbie enough time to properly barricade her door the way he taught her. He only wished that he had been able to make it inside the bedroom with her before Tristan had caught up. 

He must have made some noise of confusion, because Tristan smiled and continued talking. “It’s funny, sunshine, that you think you can protect your sister. After all, you’re too weak to even protect yourself, and too much of a coward to do anything about it. Shame that soon she’ll realize it too, huh?”

And then he feinted left, darted forward and, with alcohol induced strength, knocked Harley over the head with the rolling pin and elbowed him in the jaw. When he fell to the ground, the belt came up and whipped over his bare legs, leaving stinging red welts. Then the rolling pin came down, as well as one of Tristan’s black boots, and Harley’s vision went black. 

  
  
  
  


This time when he opened his eyes, he was in the living room of what seemed to be someone’s apartment, sitting on a soft gray couch. Spider was sitting next to him, seeming to have been waiting for him. It had been a couple nights since the first time he had woken up here, and every time Spider had been waiting for him, no matter where he’d been when he awoke. He had, in the past few nights, showed up in the green room, at his intern desk, back in May’s bed, even sprawled out on a bench in the gardens. This was one of the few times he would see Spider, as they were both very busy during the night, and Harley learned to treasure these moments. 

But this was the first time he had been forced unconscious like this, and he wishes that he could just rest instead of coming here. Harley can’t deal with being social today, can’t get his mask of cheerful, witty, indifference up and running. He can’t help but wish that today didn’t exist. 

Spider probably sees something in his expression, because he doesn’t say anything, just conjures a steaming mug of hot chocolate and hands it to him. It’s not nearly cold enough for hot chocolate, but he takes the mug and drinks, and it’s weirdly comforting. It tastes like cinnamon, and there’s a large marshmallow melting in it, and Harley realizes that this is just as much his calming ritual as it is Abbie’s. 

Once Harley finishes the cocoa and puts the empty mug on the coffee table, Spider scoots a bit closer to him of the couch, putting an arm around his shoulder, light enough that he could shrug it off if he wanted. He doesn’t. 

“You don’t quite seem yourself today, sweetheart,” Spider says, and notes when Harley flinches a little at the pet name. 

Harley snorts bitterly. “Then you clearly don’t know me that well, Spi, because this clearly  _ is _ me.” He still doesn’t shrug Spider’s arm off his shoulders, instead leaning into the touch. 

“Sorry, Sky. A poor choice of words, I think. It’s just—how are you feeling?”

“Not great, I’ll admit. But believe it or not, there are reasons I made that deal with you in the forest.”

“I’ll believe it,” Spider says, and Harley smiles. Not a large smile, but a smile nonetheless. He’s still worried, for Abbie and for his body back in the human realm, and he won’t stop worrying until he gets back, but he feels better. Well enough to go about his day—his night, really. 

“I really appreciate this, Spi. Not just cheering me up, but the deal too. You haven’t made me do anything that I don’t want to do, haven’t coerced me into anything, and you’re helping me a lot, so tha—”

The rest of Harley’s sentence was lost behind Spider’s hand as the faerie’s face went carefully blank. “Don’t say that word here, especially not with what I’m about to ask you. You don’t want to be more in my debt than you already are, and it’s not gratitude that I deserve.” He hesitantly removed his hand from Harley’s mouth to let the other speak. 

“What do you mean?” Harley asked. “I mean, I get the debt thing, but you definitely deserve it.”

No part of Spider’s blank expression broke. “Sky, would you please accompany me to the Festival of Samhain tomorrow night?”

Harley quirked an eyebrow at the not-answer, but sighed in response. “What’s the festival of Samhain?”

“The Festival of Samhain is also known as the Halloween Parade, and it’s one of the most important festivals of the year, hosted by the spirit of Samhain and duke of Autumn. Every faerie with even the tiniest bit of political standing will be there, and plenty without. Even the monarchs attend every year. It’s a chance for making political connections, dancing, feasting, and everything in between. Mister Stark is expected to attend, and so am I. You would be present as my guest.”

So, a party full of powerful fae to piss off by not following rules he barely understands.  _ It’d be nice to have a night to myself, especially if nobody expects me to work, _ Harley thought to himself. 

“Oh, uh, I don’t think I’d like to. It’ll be nice to have a night to myself, and I don’t really feel like going to a party.”

Spider nodded, his expression still blank, but something about the furrow of his eyebrows was sad. “Harley James Keener, would you please accompany me to the Festival of Samhain tomorrow night?”

Harley felt his stomach drop at the sound of his name. His  _ real, full, name.  _ His gut twisted, his hands began to shake, the blood drained from his face. There was no compulsion to obey, only a shaking in his limbs and his face dropping. He understood what Spider had said about not deserving his gratitude; after all, he wasn’t sure Spider deserved it anymore either. 

Stupid. Where could Spider have learned—oh. The contract. He had left it on the Mechanic’s desk without a thought as to who the Mechanic would deem absolutely trustworthy, but of course his son would be one of those people. Spider must have seen it when he came in to argue with Stark. Stupid, stupid, stupid, to let his guard down. To forget that even though he’s the one that can end the deal, Spider is the one that holds the strings. That at any point, Spider could drop everything, and Harley would be left coming back to the faerie realms forever, or go back to the life he had before. A life of restless nights and days of abuse. 

“S-Sky?” Spider was picking at one of the scars that crisscrossed his wrists, and he was looking at Harley nervously. “Look, I’m, uh, really sorry but I—you can’t- please come to the festival with me, Sky. I have it on good faith that—well, it might be-”

“I’ll go to the festival with you, Spider,” Harley sighed. “Tomorrow night. I have to go to work now, but I’ll see you then.” He got up from the couch to go, but Spider grabbed his wrist to stop him. Gently enough that Harley could have kept going if he so chose to, but he stopped, mid step. 

“We’ll have to depart shortly after you arrive, so I’ll provide proper dress for you. I really am sorry, Sky. And, thank you, for agreeing to go with me. I am in your debt.”

Harley turned his hand so that it fit into Spider’s and linked their fingers for a moment. Then, without a word, he left the room. 

  
  
  
  


“Your highness, have you decided whether or not you will be attending the Festival tomorrow? We have told you time and time again that you are expected to be there, being of such high standing. This is an important event, and as Wakanda has only recently agreed to become a part of court politics, it is so much more imperative that the  _ entire _ royal family will be there.”

Shuri closed her eyes in exasperation. “I know, Okoye. Like you said, you’ve told me time and time again. And like I’ve told you an equal number of times, I’m not going just to be called ‘Princess of the Wastes’ by every mocking voice. It’s tiring, and I can get more done by staying home.”

Even as she spoke, her mind was changing. The rumors had been spreading for some time, until they were heard even out in the wastes.  _ In Wakanda _ , she corrected herself mentally. It seemed her friend had brought home a human boy toy, and if he was smart, the Spider-Boy would bring him to the festival tonight. She would have thought he was too soft to get himself a human, but it seemed not. 

Her mind was made up. She would go to the festival. 

“Alright, alright, I’ll go,” Shuri said with a wave of her hand, interrupting Okoye mid sentence. Okoye herself breathed a mental sigh of relief, having been about to give in. “Someone draw me a bath,” Shuri said, getting up from her throne. “I have to go figure out what I’m going to wear tomorrow.”

  
  
  
  


Harley didn’t see Spider for the rest of the night, and he was restless the entire day before the festival. He couldn’t help but sleep as early as he could, and he blinked his eyes open at Spider’s dining table, the faerie staring at him with wide eyes. Regardless, he recovered quickly enough. 

“You’re early,” Spider said. 

“Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry. Is it… okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Of course, I just wasn’t expecting you this early into the evening. It’s only like, eight, and you typically show up around ten, earliest. This is fine though, it gives us more time to prepare.” Spider shuffled the papers in front of him into a single pile, and put them off to the side. “We have an hour or so before we have to leave, actually, so did you have any questions about the festival?”

“Well, it’s a fae festival, so there’s bound to be a bunch of rules that I don’t know about and will get in trouble for breaking. What are they?”

Spider frowned. “Technically, you should not be in danger tonight. You’re my guest, and as such, you will be under certain protections. Not to mention, you are an employee here, so you are under Mister Stark’s protection as well.”

“But faeries are all about technicalities, aren’t they? Come on, help me out here. Tell me what to do so that I don’t fuck up.”

“Just be careful. Be cautious. Anything said to you could have a million hidden meanings to look for. Nobody at this party will lie to your face, but many will be trying to trick you in some way. However, if you cause any offense, it will be placed on my shoulders and not yours. You’ve been pretty good with this so far, but try to remember that everything you own has a set value. Your name, your time, your words, your knowledge. Treat every conversation as an exchange, where there is something to gain and something to lose.”

Harley pursed his lips and his face remained impassive. After a night and day, he was feeling more settled in, more like he could figure out the problems being thrown at him. Harley’s heart was made of iron and his skin was salt and Rowan wood—any fae that tried something with him would be burned. 

An outfit was folded on the toilet seat when he went to go change, the softest red and black cloth he had ever felt. The silk black blouse was loose and flowey with a single white button at the top, embroidered with webs in a dark red thread which shimmered in the lights. The neckline was deep, and the sleeves were wide and gradually became sheer as they neared the wrists. Black skinny jeans dripped with thin golden chains from the waist, which matched his gold and black choker with yet another spider hanging the end, it’s shiny black legs against Harley’s collarbones. The only thing in the pile that seemed like something Harley would choose for himself was a silver ear cuff that wrapped around and hung a single pale wooden bead by his ear lobe. Upon closer inspection, the word  _ Sky _ was engraved into the silver. 

The final thing in the pile was a sheer, knee-length cloak embroidered with a silvery-white web pattern. Harley recognized it as the same one Spider had been wearing in the forest, and it attached to silver hoops on the shoulders of the blouse. Even though the cloth isn’t scratchy, even though it’s the softest thing he’s ever worn, he want’s to scratch at his skin. 

When Harley looks in the mirror, the person looking back looks nothing like him. The person in the mirror looks like a faerie, looks like “ _ one of Spider’s _ ”. Everywhere he went here, people called him that, but it wasn’t until now that he saw what they meant. Tonight, he wasn’t his own person; he effectively belonged to Spider. 

And Harley trusted that Spider would get him through this. He digs through the drawers in the sink for makeup, puts on concealer and mascara and a shiny lip gloss. Contours his face, puts on eyeliner, the whole shebang. He hasn’t put on this much makeup since last Halloween, but the less he feels like himself, the more he’s playing a role, the easier this festival will be. 

Spider is waiting nervously outside the bathroom when Harley comes out. He’s in the red tunic from the forest, but his own cloak is embroidered with flowers. A glowing wooden circlet sits on his head, and he’s wearing makeup as well. He nods when he sees Harley. 

“We have to get be on our way,” he says. “The festival is starting soon.”

“Before we go, Spider-” Spider turns around, his eyebrows furrowed. “I just, if you ever think I’m in danger tonight, and you can do something to me in order to stop it, you have my permission. Anything.”

Spider nodded solemnly at him and grasped his hand tightly for a half second. “It’s a deal.”

  
  
  
  


The prickling feeling of Spider’s thorns intensified for a moment, digging into Harley’s skin, just riding the edge of pain. There was a weight in his gut, and then, with a pull as if Spider was tugging on his hand, they disappeared. 

Harley was suddenly surrounded by bright warm lights, and sound that felt enormous compared to the previous silence. All around him were spirits of every shape and size, some decidedly humanoid, some resembling animals to a point, and some others such a jumble of wings and eyes and radiating light that just looking at them made him feel a bit drowsy. The feeling of overwhelming diversity was similar to his first day at the compound, but on a much larger scale. 

And all of this was lit by hundreds of floating lights, the warm glow putting the black sky and far away forest into stark contrast. And yes, they were outside— just beyond the edge of the party Harley spied a vast field, hemmed on one side by a pine forest, and on another by a low river she could only tell was there by the countless bridges spanning over it. On the ground were carved pumpkins, cut with eerily realistic faces, monsters, or simple flora. 

Around the area were tables piled high with food, some of it familiar and some of it not. There were little burgers and frosted cakes, yes, but also champurrado hot chocolate and horchata in glass mugs, and platters of conchas and macarons. There were huge fish almost as long as Harley was tall, bright purple flowers dipped in crystal sugar, whole pigs roasted and glazed. Spun sugar and pumpkin pie and spiced cider and mulled wine, and hundreds of fae eating and drinking and talking. There were humanoid spirits holding platters with drinks on them—goblets in gold and silver, and others holding plates of rice and meat wrapped in grape leaves, or tiny glasses with layered desserts. 

“I think,” Spider said, pulling on Harley’s hand, “that this is a good time to remind you not to eat anything.”

“I won’t,” Harley reassured him. “I’m not hungry.” Nonetheless, Harley feels himself tense up. Everything here is designed to lure him in, and he refuses to fall for any of it. Every person, every faerie, every shiney rock or delicious smelling food is a potential threat, and Harley hasn’t survived this long to die now. 

“Spider-boy!” A girl around their age with dark skin and hair with gold feline eyes strides up to them. She’s wearing a rust colored cloth and leather wrap with patterns and golden beaded embroidery. There’s paint on her cheeks, and her hair is done up in an elegant bun. “I’m glad to see you here.”

“The princess of the Wastes, fancy seeing you here. I didn’t know that this was your typical scene,” Spider says. 

“Don’t call me that, I’ve been hearing it since I got here. I came here to see you, in part, though I don’t believe this is your usual scene either. Heard you finally got your prize, is it this one?” She had a heavy accent, one that Harley didn’t recognize. 

“Yeah, I just got him a few days back. But let’s not talk about prizes tonight—have you seen any of our mutual friends yet?”

“Huh, would have thought you were too soft to actually make use of your prize. But as you wish. I saw a few of them over there, if you would come with me?”

Spider reached over and squeezed Harley’s arm. “Run off, I have some people to meet. I’ll come and find you after I’m finished.”

Harley was happy to leave the presence of the woman, and he slipped off into the growing crowd. He walked slowly in a random direction, no particular destination in mind, just wandering. The fae didn’t seem to notice or care about him, though a few gave polite greetings (which he returned with equal politeness) or small smiles. He had spoken the truth when he said he wasn’t hungry, but when he strolled past the food he looked and breathed in deep. Some of the dishes looked quite good, and he hoped to recreated them at home. 

He soon noticed that he wasn’t actually the only human at the festival, and once he noticed, it was easy enough to tell them apart. None of them were like him, or even Carlos and the janitor, but instead were dazed, slumped, and didn’t seem to know where they were. Many were pulled along on leashes by fae, like lapdogs, or decorated with gems and piercings but left staring off into space. Some were at the food tables, stuffing their faces as if starved, with no regard to te consequences, and none seemed to have their full sensibilities intact. 

Whenever he sees another human, he averts his gaze, not able to look at them for long. He can’t do anything for them now, and he doesn’t want to cause trouble for Spider or himself. Some look for trouble, but Harley just wants to survive. 

Distracted, he walks through the gathering until something cool and scaly begins to wind up his ankle, causing him to go stock still. He looks down, to see a green snake with black eyes climbing up his leg, it’s forehead adorned with a golden helmet-like pattern the comes out of it’s forehead into two golden horns.  _ Oh shit _ , Harley thinks to himself.  _ Oh shit, okay. Fuck. Fuck. Okay don’t panic, that won’t help. F u c k. _

“You seem like you require some assistance,” came a voice. It was a fae of indeterminate gender with piercing green eyes and wavy black hair, wearing a long green dress and a strange golden helmet that frankly looks for decorative than functional. 

Harley’s gaze darted from the helmet to the snakes horns.  _ Well shit _ . The pattern on the snakes forehead and the helmet are one and the same, and tonight, coincidences don’t exist. 

“There seems to be a snake on my leg,” Harley stated mildly. He linked his hands behind his back to hide the fact that they were shaking. 

The stranger’s eyes go wide, and they bring a hand to their chest. “Unfortunate. I could remove her for you,” they said. They made no move to do so, however.

“If you would like to have her, you are entirely welcome to her. You may take her whenever you like.”

“I need your permission to touch you,” the stranger said, raising an eyebrow. 

“You don’t need to touch me in order to retrieve the snake,” Harley said crossly. He was certain that he was being tricked, and he wasn’t at all pleased about it. 

“No they do not,” came a voice from behind him, “especially as Loki’s snake is entirely illusory. Brother, I tell you to stop playing your tricks on your little victims, but the second I turn away you’re at it again.” 

Loki glowers and the snake on Harley’s leg disappears in a burst of green light. The spirit that’s joined them steps forward to stand at Loki’s side, and despite the fact that they had been called ‘brothers’, they looked nothing alike. The newcomer was tall, blonde, bearded, and muscular, wearing silver armor and a red cape, in contrast to his skinny, black haired, dress wearing goth brother. 

“My mistake, brother,” Loki says, clearly reluctant. 

Their brother takes no notice of this and gathers them up into a hug. “No worries, all is forgiven.” He turned to Harley. “Your friend, the Starkson boy, was looking for you. He is still with the rest of the court, but if you follow us a ways, we will lead you to him.”

“I appreciate the kind offer.” Harley isn’t sure if he trusts this strange fae yet, especially the the trick his brother tried to pull, but he was desperate to get back to the one person here he knew he could trust. 

“Alright then! Come on brother, let’s go.” 

They walk purposefully through the clearing with Harley following slightly behind, and it’s only a few minutes before he sees Spider. Once he’s in sight, Harley breathes a huge mental sigh of relief, quickening his steps just a bit in order to get to Spider faster. 

“Thor, Loki! It’s good to see you guys.” Spider greets them, his smile widening. “Loki, number?”

“Like, a five maybe. Was going to play some tricks but Thor thwarted me away from this one.” He stepped aside to reveal Harley. 

“Oh, you’ve met Sky! He’s my guest tonight.” Harley wants nothing more than to beg Spider if they can go back to the compound, but he just steps up to Spider’s side, letting their shoulders press against each other. Spider winds an almost possessive arm around his waist, and Harley leans into the touch. “Alright,” he told them. “Thank’s for bringing him to me.”

“Of course,” Thor answered, and he and his brother walked off, presumable to enjoy the rest of the party.

“Are you alright?” Spider asked. “I know Loki can be a bit much.”

Harley nodded slowly, leaning far enough into Spider that his head was pretty much on the faeries shoulder. 

“Okay, sweetheart, but if you wanted to leave, we could. I’ve finished all my business here, and we’ve stayed long enough to be polite.”

“Please,” Harley said. He didn’t think he could say anything else, but he also didn’t need to. Spider began leading him out of the clearing, towards the river. 

They’re away from most of the fae and in a wooded section of the meadow when Spider suddenly went stock still. And then, all of a sudden, there were lips on his, Spider pushing against him, wrapping arms against him. The kiss was urgent, just lips against lips, and one of Spider’s hands of in Harley’s hair. He almost melted into the feeling, but a pulsing thought pushed it’s way to the front of his mind—  _ Spider doesn’t have consent to kiss me.  _

It was that thought that completely broke the haze in his mind. That, and the memory of the permission that he had given Spider earlier in the evening. Permission that meant Harley must be in danger. The next thing that broke through the haze was the sound of music, coming their way through the woods. There were booming drums and airy flutes and something with strings that made you want to dance, and the combination made the hairs on the back of Harley’s neck raise. His lips were still pressed to Spider’s, so he yanked his head back and made eye contact with Spider’s apologetic stare. 

Through the music, Harley heard the sound of drunken laughter, and liquid splashing, and there was a faint painful whimpering beneath it all. He let himself go limp, and Spider pulled him close, keeping an arm around his waist. And with a prickle of thorns, they were gone. 

  
  
  
  


Spider brought them into a small old-fashioned looking bedroom, and sat Harley down on the bed. Splashed across Harley’s bare feet in arcs of bright crimson was blood, blood that was unmistakably human in nature. Looking at it made him nauseous, so he looked around the room, clenching and unclenching his hands in the sheets rhythmically. Spider himself rushed around the room, lighting candles and digging through the wardrobe in the corner. 

When he finished, Spider came over and carefully peeled Harley’s hands away from the sheets, taking them in his own and, with careful eye contact, laid his forehead against Harley’s. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured, and gave his hands a squeeze before retreating from the room. He comes back with a copper bowl of water and a couple fluffy looking white towels. Without a word, he kneels and puts Harley’s feet into the hot water, letting the crimson wash away. The towels he wets with a thought, and uses them to clean away the grime on Harley’s face and what skin he can reach. 

“Not that this outfit looks bad on you, but…?” Spider says quietly, and Harley huffs in approval, carefully unlatching the cloak and taking everything off. He’s now in nothing but his underwear, but he makes no move to cover himself, and for whatever reason, he isn’t cold. Spider continues to wipe him off, and until parts of him began to feel clean, he hadn’t even noticed how dirty he was. The blood had, by then, swirl away into the steaming water and disappeared. 

Harley put on the clean white tee that Spider handed to him, and slipped underneath the covers. Although the bed was small, and although there were only a few more hours of night left, he opened his arms, and Spider slid between them, having also shed most of his clothing. Spider wrapped an arm around his waist, comforting this time instead of possessive, and Harley buried his face into the crook of Spider’s neck. 

And like that, he fell asleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the festival, and then some *excitement*! (Ooh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relative to the rest of the year, this is still around New Years....... right? Actually though, finals just took a lot more out of me than I thought. Super sorry this chapter is late!
> 
> As promised, lots of excitement this chapter ;)) [not like that though :P]

In his dreams, Harley saw flashes of green, of grassy meadows near flooded with sparkling still water, reflecting hundreds of unfamiliar constellations. The water was crystal clear, making the stars look like glowing specks on the petals of pink and blue wildflowers. Weaving through the long grass were large koi in red and black and white and gold, moonlight glimmering off their scales. On a hill, raised out of the water, was a small cabin, yellow light in some of the windows. Surrounding the meadow were purple mountain ranges, rising into gradual snowy peaks, and it was from here that the water flowed in bubbling streams. 

Even with these mountains, Harley could see the full moon setting slowly, and from the east, the sky turning purple, and then yellow. The sun was coming up, and through the mist he drifted closer to the cabin, peering through the windows. Inside, he and Spider lay, pressed together in a small bed, under off-white sheets. Spider’s eyes were all closed, his soft curls fanning across his cheeks, and one of his arms was on top of the covers, curling around Harley’s own waist. No alarm passed through Harley’s mind at the sight of himself, only a small comfort as he felt the weight of Spider’s arm even as he was separated from his own body. His own face was pressed into Spider’s neck, his legs tangled with Spiders, and he was sleeping soundly. 

As he watched, Spider’s eyelids fluttered as the rays of light struck them, and two of his white eyes opened, blinking blearily at the window. He pressed closer to Harley for a moment before the rest of his eyes opened and focused downwards on Harley’s face. He smiled softly and sat up halfway, reaching over to pull the curtains over the window to blot out the sunlight. Spider reached over to the wooden stool beside the bed and conjured a glass of fizzing liquid, the one that would make Harley wake up in the human world. He leaned over and softly brushed his lips over Harley’s forehead before shaking his shoulder gently to wake him up. 

Harley, still dreaming, drifted closer and closer until finally floating into his own body. There was only darkness behind his own closed eyelids, so he blinked them open, yawning with sudden drowsiness. Spider was there, a hand on his shoulder, smiling at him and holding a glass. The room was dark again, the candles that Spider had lit when they first came back from the party a few hours ago having gone out. Still, small slits of light peeked out from behind the curtain, turning sections of his messy curls gold, and reflecting off the copper specks in his brown eyes, lighting them up.

“Hey sweetheart,” Spider whispered. “Don’t wake up all the way yet, okay? I know you’re tired, just drink this and you can go back to sleep, alright?”

“Don’t wanna,” Harley murmured sleepily, his words and accent slurring together, even as he reached to take the cup from Spider and brought it to his lips. “Want ta stay here with you, don’t wanna go back.” 

Spider blinked all of his eyes in surprise, but smiled again and held Harley close, both of his hands on his back, over the shirt he was wearing so that the prickle of thorns and roughness of scars couldn’t reach him. He rubbed between Harley’s shoulder blades as he drank, and laid him back down on the pillow as Harley’s eyes fluttered back closed. “You gotta though, sweetheart. Sleep, and wake up, I’ll see you again tonight.”

When Harley’s alarm went off in the human realm, Spider’s words echoed through his head, chasing the feeling of lips brushing across his forehead, and he smiled. He stopped his alarm, brushed the hair out of Abbie’s face, who had slept in his room that night, and began getting ready for the day. 

  
  
  
  


Something in his and Spider’s dynamic had shifted, and Harley was eager to see him again. Tristan hadn’t come home that night, so he slept early again, urging Abbie to do the same. They might as well, if they could, and so for the second night in a row Harley materialized in the faerie world before 9:30 at night. 

Unlike usual, however, Spider isn’t there to meet him when he wakes up. He’s in the compound instead of Spider’s cabin, sitting up in May’s bed in the workers’ quarters. May herself was sitting in the chair next to the bed, waiting for him. 

“You’re here early again,” she told him, “I’m glad I got here already. Spider says he’s sorry he couldn’t come for you instead, by the way.”

Harley blinked the sleep out of his eyes and looked around quickly before turning back to May. Unlike the last time he had been here, the room was near empty, though he supposed it made sense as the work day had started a couple hours ago. “Where is Spider anyways? I’ve been wanting to talk to him all day.”

May winced. “Oh, sorry Sky. He left on one of his dad’s missions almost as soon as the sun went down earlier this evening, and he didn’t say how long he would be gone. Usually the missions don’t take any longer than a week, though. He said to tell you he’s sorry? I guess that makes sense if you’d agreed to talk. Oh, and he also said to give you this.” She dug through her purse and took out a familiar sand colored wooden box. The shape of clouds was burned into it, and the box opened to reveal the silver ear cuff he had worn at the party. The cuff that had said, even when everything else in his appearance contradicted it, that Harley belonged to himself, not any fae. Not even Spider. 

He fixed it to his ear and pocketed the box with a smile. “Thanks, May,” he told her. “It’s fine, we can talk when he gets back. Did he say where I’m assigned to work today?”

With that, May lit up. “Actually, you’re set to work with me in the medical wing until my nephew gets back! I know it’s not mechanics like you’re used to, and Spider did warn me that you don’t like biology, but you have such steady hands and I’ve been asking for you since day one.”

“Never said I don’t like it, just that I don’t know much about it!” Nevertheless, he grinned to himself at the thought that Spider had remembered that little detail from the first day they had met. “It’ll be good working with someone I know, though,” he conceded. “When do we start?” 

“Now, if you’re feeling up to it. We always have more patients than we have enough people for, so if you’re awake and ready to go, we can hop to it.”

Harley swung his legs out of bed and jumped up, his shoes materializing on his feet. “Alright then, shall we?”

  
  
  


As soon as they stepped into the medical wing, which looked mostly like a hospital but smelled more like a spice or tea shop, May was immediately rushed into one of the rooms, Harley following belatedly after her. Laying on a small bed was a spirit with three lavender eyes and long silver hair. Their skin looked like birch tree bark, all pale and flaking and papery, and in the middle of their torso there was a large chunk of wood? Flesh? Missing from their body. The wound was oozing smooth black sap, like thick ink, and the sight made Harley cringe. The spirit was laying on their back, propped up on their elbows, and they gave May and Harley a pained smile when they came in. 

Upon seeing the spirit, May immediately rushed to put on gloves, handing Harley a pair before grabbing for bandages from a nearby cabinet. Harley put the gloves on before going over to the spirit to take a look at the wound. It looked for all the world like something had taken a bite out of the poor spirit, but Harley could have sworn he saw a glimmer of eyes in their blood. He squinted at it for a moment before May pushed him aside. 

“Vicnae, why do you always get yourself into these messes?” May asked as she put a hand on the skin next to the wound. 

“Hey, to be fair it wasn’t my fault this time. A lycanthrope bit me!”

“Your fault for bothering a lycanthrope then, of all things.” May made to start bandaging the wound, but Harley but his hand on her arm. 

“Uhh, May, I think there’s something inside the wound, I saw it’s eyes earlier,” he told her. 

“Is there now?” She leaned in close, spotting another gleam of eyes. “Huh, you might be right. Hand me the cleaning solution in the tall bottle with the blue cap, will you?” May grabbed a wooden stick and poked around in the wound for a second while Harley went over to the counter with the sink to look for it. 

“The light blue or the dark blue?” He asked. 

“Dark blue. It should say  _ purified water  _ on the front in near-illegible handwriting?” May called back, distracted and trying to find whatever was hiding in there while Vicnae clenched their entire face further up the bed. 

The bottle in question looked like a glass soda bottle with a dark blue bottle cap marked with a silver sort of swirl. Taped onto the front was a piece of faded paper with something scribbled over it. Upon closer inspection, it did appear to say something along the lines of  _ purified water _ , and the liquid inside was clear. Harley handed it to May, who wasted no time and simply began to pour the liquid into the wound. Vicnae finally relaxed with a sigh, and the sap sizzled and dissolved and then disappeared, though more began to ooze out. The new sap was clear and slightly amber, as well as much thinner. What was left behind of the black coalesced into a small round blob of translucent gel with two white specks for eyes. 

Somehow, the tiny blob hopped out of the wound, which May immediately began bandaging, and onto Harley’s hand. He scooped it up into the palm of his other hand lifted it up for him to see better. A tiny hole opened up in the blob underneath it’s eyes. 

“Ouch!” The blob squeaked indignantly. “Hurts!”

Harley flinched at the sound of its voice, but decided not to question it. After all, after a couple weeks in the faerie world, he had learned to just sort of go with everything as long as nobody else was panicking. “Uh, May, the blob said it’s hurting.”

“What?” May turned around to see Harley cupping the blob in both hands awkwardly. “It can talk?”

“...yeah. Is it not supposed to do that?” Harley asked. 

“I’ve never seen a spirit like that before. Usually ones that small aren’t sentient. It’s probably the cleaning solution hurting, just run it under the tap or something,” she said, turning her attention back to Vicnae. 

“Welp,” Harley said to himself. He held the blob in one hand before letting the tiniest of streams run from the sink. The little blob turned over and over in the water, seemingly cleaning itself off before rubbing against Harley’s finger. It floated into the air and drifting close to Harley’s face. 

“Yay! No hurts now!” It told him happily as he turned off the tap. 

“That’s good,” Harley said encouragingly. “Do you have a name or something you want me to call you?”

“No name…” it said. 

“Oh. Well, can I give you a name?” Harley asked. 

“Yes! Name! Name! ...please?”

“Hmm,” Harley thought to himself. For a second he wished Spider was there—after all, Harley was shit at naming things, including himself. Hmm… what would Spider have named the little blob? “What about Inkblot? Well, it doesn’t have to be your Name, you can come up with that yourself, but can I call you that?”

“Ink! Inkblot! Yesss… please. Ink ink ink inkblot. And… you?” Inkblot asked. 

“Me? Oh, I’m called Sky. It’s good to meet you, Inkblot.” Harley looked around the room. Vicnae was sleeping soundly in the bed, and May was gone. He decided to go find her when he was done. 

“Sky! Mis-ter Sky. Call me… Ink! Not name… please,” Inkblot squeaked, and then darted to his shoulder, twining through a lock of his hair. “Also…” Ink said more quietly into his ear. “Come with… please. Not go back, stay. With mis-ter Sky.”

Harley absently reached up with a finger to pat Ink on the head, and began walking out of the room, speaking more quietly as he did so. “Sure, of course. How come though?”

“Old sir, not so nice. No care if me or friends hurt. Make us hurt others. Not so nice,” Ink explained. 

“Okay, well as you don’t hurt any more people, of course you can come along.”

  
  
  
  


The days passed by in a blur, as did the nights. Ink was surprisingly helpful in the medical ward, being small and also able to enter a patient’s bloodstream, etcetera, at will. Harley suspected May would have tried to recruit Ink to be her assistant after Harley had to be elsewhere, if only they were not so attached to Harley himself. For indeed, they had imprinted on Harley like a duckling, and insisted on following him around wherever he went, cautious of letting anyone else handle them. Even in the human world Harley sometimes would see a glimmer of eyespots in the rooms darkest shadow, easily mistaken for a trick of the light. 

Working with May was interesting and even fun. Much of the time, as he had no medical training whatsoever, he simply talked to the patient while May worked, distracting them and such. Their stories were interesting, and often times they’d trade them back and forth—an equivalent exchange. Harley found talking to spirits and faeries almost easier than talking to humans, and here, where everyone was used to trickery and manipulation, it was much more fun to slip in and out of his charming and flirtatious mask. Here, where everyone knew that it  _ was _ a mask that he was wearing, even if they had never seen how he would be without it. 

And Spider had warned him that each conversation would be an exchange, where something is to be gained or lost, but talking to the patients, keeping that in mind was freeing. He found that he had gained much more than he had “lost” trading his own experiences for the stories of the fae. Harley found himself telling the story of his first meeting with the Mechanic to a redcap with a broken arm, who laughed and regaled him with the story of how he met his wife. After a bad day he ranted at a wood nymph about Tristan while she was being operated on (apparently there were no anesthetics that worked on wood nymphs, and that was a problem the medical ward was working on at the moment). After she was done, she told him about how the pollution in her forest was killing off her friends, and how saving one of them was the reason she was there that day. It was good to talk to these people, to connect with them, and from many he received small tokens of gratitude for distracting them from their pain. 

It was rewarding work, and still he sighed every evening when he woke up. He had stopped appearing in random spots in the compound and around the grounds, but instead consistently in the work quarters, where he had eventually gotten his own bed. Spider was still nowhere to be found, even though it had passed the one week mark and was on to the next. Even in his absence, changes in Rose Hill were being made to accommodate their deal. The bus began to run on slightly different times, and the weather prediction over Thanksgiving break had changed from snow to sunny skies. Harley had began making plans, not sure where they would go, but looking at bus routes and hoping something would turn up. 

Halfway through the second week of Spider’s absence, Harley found himself on the balcony outside the work quarters. He had worked through the midnight break, as he hadn’t arrived at the compound until it was nearing eleven, and had elected to take his hour off now instead. It was nearing 3:00AM, and the moon was starting to set, not that the thin crescent cast much light anyways. It was dark, the grounds empty of people and thus also empty of light, and almost completely silent. 

And then, out of nowhere, scuttling out of the forest on eight legs came a spirit, black as the night with a humanoid torso jutting out, like a centaur but half spider instead of half horse. As it ran towards the compound in huge leaping bounds, as if chased, Harley realized that it was in fact Spider. His hair was wild, there were scratch marks all over his body, and a trail of crimson and pale blue blood followed him as he scaled the building. Spider was much larger than Harley was used to seeing him, just the spider part of his body almost as tall as Harley was. 

Out of the forest after him came a huge white wolf, larger than any wolf had a right to be. Imagine, in your head, how big you think a wolf is. Okay, you know what, even regular wolves are larger than the wolf in your head. Larger. Larger than that. Would the wolf in your head fit through your front door? If the answer is yes, your wolf is too small. You’d think a wolf this large would crash through the forest at least as loudly as Spider had done, but as it bounded forward, it made no sound at all. One of the wolf’s front legs had been replaced with a black metal prosthetic that was painted with a white star.

“Shit shit sHIT SHIT  _ SHIT _ !” Harley told himself as he scrambled to his feet. Spider was already halfway up the walls to Harley, who leaned out over the balcony to call out to him. “Fuck! Spider! SPIDER! Come on, over here!”

Spider’s eyes flashed to his wildly before charging at him, and Harley darted to the side just as Spider crashed through the screen doors and into the work quarters, falling to the ground and getting blood everywhere, breathing heavily and coughing with every intake of breath. Harley, having fallen down in his rush to not get trampled, saw the wolf hit the side of the building and dissolve into snow, getting whisked away on the wind. In his hurry to get inside, he missed the small pile of snow that blew onto the balcony. The snow rolled together into a small white blob the size of a ping pong ball—just a smidge smaller than Inkblot— and drifted after him, barely an inch off the ground. 

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Harley muttered as he ran to Spider, wringing his hands. “Spider! Oh my god, you’re bleeding, you need to go down to medical.”

Not even seeming to recognize him, Spider bared his teeth at Harley and scurried back out onto the balcony. Upon seeing that the wolf was gone, he hurled himself over the edge of the balcony, despite Harley’s protests, caught himself on a web that shot out from his wrist, and climbed up the wall and onto the roof, quickly dropping out of sight. 

Meanwhile, Inkblot spotted the newcomer on the floor and slid off of Harley’s shoulder to say hello. They quickly floated over and intertwined with the white blob the way they often did with Harley’s hair, and the white blob formed for themself a single pointy tooth and nipped back playfully. 

“Oh shit, oh fuck, I have to go after him,” Harley said to himself, rolling up his sleeves and making sure his shoelaces were double knotted. He couldn’t afford to trip now. While he was knelt down, Ink brought over the white blob to Harley and squeaked at him. 

“Friend! Come with!”

“Alright,” Harley said hurriedly as the blobs floated upwards, Inkblot letting the newcomer sit in Harley’s hair and setting for the inside of his hoodie pocket. “What do you want to be called?”

“Snowfall, snow.” They whispered smoothly into Harley’s ear. “Drifts, wind, ice, cold.” 

“Alright, hold on tight. We’re going after Spider, and I know you can float but I still don't want you falling, alright?”

Both blobs chirped their agreement, so Harley ran back out onto the balcony and ran down the length of it, trying to find a way up. He vaulted over the side of the railing onto a fire-escape ladder and climbed upwards, keeping an eye on the trail of blood that would lead him to Spider. Once he reached the top of the ladder, he carefully reached out with his foot and grabbed onto a window frame before hauling himself onto the roof with some amount of struggle. Thankfully, the edge of the roof didn’t jut too far out from the wall, so it wasn’t too difficult to reach, and Harley did his best to avoid looking down as he hung over thin air. 

The roof itself was thankfully flat concrete, and Harley sprinted across the length of it to the other side, peering over the edge of the wall to see where Spider had gone. Directly underneath him was a huge window, the panes opened outward like a set of French doors, only instead of opening onto a balcony they opened into empty space. There was nothing below him to catch his fall, but Harley could see the blood splatter on the window sill, so he sat down on the edge and tried to judge the likelihood of him making it if he tried to swing himself in. 

“Oh fuck it,” he muttered to himself, and slowly slid off the roof on his stomach until he was hanging from the rafters, and began to swing. From this perspective, he could see inside the room—the room that was looking very familiar, albeit empty. 

Harley let go and vaulted into the Mechanic’s office, stumbling and falling flat on his face, only narrowly missing the sharp edge of the desk. “Goddamnit,” he said to Inkblot as he propped himself up on his elbows. “You’re telling me I could have just taken the elevator here?”

“You okay?” Inkblot squeaked, dripping down Harley’s bangs to hang in his face with great concern. 

“I’ll manage,” he grumbled. “And what about you two?”

“Good!” Chirped Inkblot. 

“That way,” Snow whispered, gesturing with their entire body towards the open door where the blood trail led. Instead of floating through the air as Ink was so fond of doing, they drifted along the ground, following the trail carefully, reminding Harley of a bloodhound with its nose to the ground. He grinned at the mental image as he walked along, the adrenaline having not worn off yet. 

The grin faded the second he entered the room and registered the limp body of Spider laying near the roaring fireplace at the back of the room. A slowly growing puddle of swirling crimson and pale blue surrounded him, and as Harley watched, he coughed up more blood weakly. 

“Fuck, Spider!” Harley ran towards him, Inkblot grabbing onto a few strands of hair to come with him. As Harley knelt at his side, neither noticed Snow drifting intangibly through the cabinets and drawers in the room. Finally the little blob came to Spider and Harley’s side with a yellow pill that seemed to contain some kind of gel. 

“Please be okay, please be okay,” Harley repeated under his breath as he checked the scratches on Spider’s torso as well as his spider half. None on the human side of his body looked fatal, though some were deep and definitely needed treatment, but he wasn’t sure about the ones on the spider side. They seemed to be cracks in the faerie’s exoskeleton, and he wasn’t sure what to do about them. “Snow, what’s that?”

Snow slid the pill into Harley’s hand. “For him, it will help.”

Without a word, and probably against his own better judgement, he opened Spider’s mouth and placed the pill inside. “Swallow,” Harley told him firmly. 

“Hnnn,” Spider groan, but did so. Immediately, he began to cough and thrash, spitting up even more blood. 

“What the hell, Snow!? You said it would help!” Harley immediately yelped, drawing Spider closer to him. With one last heaving gasp, Spider coughed out a tiny black and white star, maybe the size of a large marble. As soon as it was on the ground, it grew to the size of a shuriken, though one with five sides instead of the typical four or six. 

Spider went completely rag doll in Harley’s arms and began to change back into his more humanoid form while Snow immediately dove for the star. Ink darted into their way and twined around them, blocking their way, giving Harley the chance to grab it. 

“No!” Snow rumbled, voice too loud and deep for a spirit their size, and they scrambled for the star in Harley’s hands. In a panic, Harley shoved the star into his pocket and managed to grab Snow out of the air and hold them tight in a fist. The little knob that formed Snow’s head stuck out of the fist and he regarded Harley’s with some seriousness. 

“Mine,” they said, and burst into a flurry of snow that drifted out the open door and outside via the window without touching the ground or any other surface. Harley watched this in faint shock, one hand curled around the shuriken in his pocket and the other slowly falling down to his lap from where it had been clenched into a fist. Part of his brain recognized the snow as what the wolf from earlier had dissolved into, and he frowned to himself. 

All the patients he had been working with for the past days hadn’t tried anything, hadn’t tried to trick him, and interacting with them had been refreshing. It had made him lower his guard, made him too  _ soft _ , and he had made a near terrible mistake. Harley had, against his better judgement and against all his research and even against common sense, trusted a spirit he had just met, without looking for misleading signs or  _ anything _ . And all this, almost at the cost of Spider’s life. 

_ Stupid, stupid, stupid, _ Harley thought to himself as he hauled Spider up, linking the faerie’s arms around his neck and shoulders. Spider was now once again fully humanoid, and the wounds on his Spider half seemed to have turned into deep cuts in his legs and feet.  _ I’m such an idiot. Everything could be a threat. The people here want to eat the meat off your bones, Keener, and just because they’re friendly doesn’t mean you can forget that. _

  
  
  
  


As the elevator doors closed and FRIDAY started to send them down to the medbay, Inkblot cautiously peeked their head into Harley’s vision. 

“Sorry, mis-ter Sky.” They said, looking apologetically wispy as they hung in the air. “Didn’t know. Thought Snow was friend.”

Harley sighed and spared a hand to bring Inkblot back to their spot on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Ink. I was tricked too. Hope you aren’t hiding anything like that though?”

Ink squirmed on his shoulder. “No! No!”

“Okay, I believe you.” Harley reassured them before falling silent again. The rest of the ride to the medical wing was silent, and they arrived there quickly, FRIDAY seeming to know that it was urgent. 

May was already waiting when the doors opened, and she immediately rushed to relieve Harley of most of Spider’s weight. “Sky, help me take him to room seven, quickly now. FRIDAY told me Spider was injured, so I’ve already prepared the room for him.”

With the power of teamwork, they were able to settle Spider onto a hospital bed, and May stripped off most of his clothing while Harley twitched nervously in the corner. She quickly set to bandaging all his cuts and scrapes, and then decided he would likely benefit from an IV, as he had lost quite an amount of blood, and began setting that up as well. As May did so, Harley hesitantly approached her and tapped her on the shoulder. 

“How is he?” He asked her. 

She pursed her lips. “Stable, and alive. I’m sensing a lot of negative energy around him though, and if even I can sense it, it can’t be good. Especially since he definitely should be awake by now—none of his injuries were as major as they seemed to be, and the main physical health issue at the moment seems to be blood loss.” May frowned. “That and the very powerful curse, which I’m going to have someone look at as soon as I finish this up.”

“Uh, May? After I found him, he coughed a bunch and threw up this,” he told her, showing her the star. He neglected to let her know about the giant white wolf or the way Snow had tricked him. “Do you recognize it? Maybe it has something to do with the curse.”

May’s eyes went wide. “Recognize it? This is the five-sided star of the Winter Soldier, one of the most skilled assassins in the Faerie world. The story goes that he made a deal with a human nazi organization called Hydra during your Second World War and lost most of his memories. He famously killed many people, and because he is immortal, was passed from hand to hand in that human organization. It was during this time that this star was commissioned from a powerful witch, and back then it was red and silver. More recently, however, the Winter Soldier regained his own mind and re-did the star to suit himself, changing the magic and turning it black and white.

“Several years back, one of Mr. Stark’s oldest friends, the Captain, betrayed him for the Winter Soldier, and they ran off together. Mr. Stark prohibits anyone from speaking of them to him anymore, and we only hear of them in whispered stories. Rumor has it they’ve gone to the Wastes, which, more recently, revealed itself as a functioning nation and is trying for a spot in both courts. I think they’re calling it Wakanda now,” May told him in a hushed tone as she continued to set everything up. “Nobody’s heard from them since their fight with Mr. Stark, so knowing that they’re still around, is… something.”

“Huh,” Harley murmured to himself. He turned to May. “Do you think the star is very important to the Winter Soldier, then?”

“Oh, certainly. It’s a very powerful magical item, and I’ve heard it’s one of his few favorite weapons. And I’m sure it holds plenty of sentimental value as well.” May said offhandedly. 

“I guess I should return it then, right?” He quietly asked Ink, who nodded in agreement. “May, in theory, how would I get to the Wastes?”

She jerked and spun around, squinting her eyes at Harley, who blinked innocently. “In  _ theory _ , you could take the sky train there from the station in town, but only  _ in theory. _ ” May said, putting emphasis on the last two words. “Actual train tickets are horribly expensive and nobody knows where they’re sold. Not at the station, that’s for sure. Even just getting to town is a hassle—an hour’s ride through the woods, not to mention we don’t get days off. Everyone lives at the compound for a reason.”

“Is that the only way to get there?” Harley asked curiously, repocketing the star. 

“Yes,” May said firmly. “Wakanda isn’t even in the faerie realms, and the sky train is the only way to purposefully go realm to realm without someone making you a custom portal, which takes anything from months to years, and that’s under the condition that you can hire a high level mage to do it for you. Don’t even think about it, Sky. It’s dangerous and unrealistic.”

Harley nodded, disappointed. “Okay. I’ll think on it then, I guess.” He settled into a chair next to the hospital bed and folded his arms in his lap. May smiled sympathetically and summoned the tablet and water for him, letting him pop the tablet into the glass and watch it fizz. 

“Good luck back home, Sky. I’ll update you when you get back, alright? He’ll be fine, or I’ll kill him myself.” May laughed painfully.

“Heh, so long as you let me at him first. Morning, May—see you tonight.” And he drifted off into slumber, his corporation disappearing soon after. 

  
  
  
  


Tristan had been getting drunk in the living room for the better part of the evening, and Harley could hear his mom cooking tomorrow’s dinner in the kitchen. Sunday nights used to be game nights, one of Emily Keener’s few days off, but they hadn’t had one for months now. It was always “next week, next time, next Sunday, I  _ promise _ ,” and Harley was starting to miss faeries and their unbreakable contracts. Nevertheless, he said goodnight to Abbie and went to his own room, reminding her to lock her door and locking his own as well. 

Before he forgot, he went over to one of the books on his desk and flipped through it, taking out a 10 dollar bill he had put between the pages. It was better to keep it in a book than a wallet or piggy bank or otherwise, as nobody would think to steal money out of his copy of Phantom Tollbooth. He put the bill into an inside pocket of his backpack so that he could stop by the store for more hot cocoa the next day after school—his and Abbie’s stash was running low. 

As he knelt by his backpack, he felt a shiver go up his spine and heard the rustle of grass, which made absolutely  _ no _ sense, as he was inside the house. There was a short flash of green light, which emanated from the pocket of his backpack, and when it died down there were two train tickets next to the ten dollar bill, as well as a note written on ripped white paper. 

It was messily written in black pen, but after turning the light a bit brighter, Harley was able to decipher the handwriting:  _ An apology for my little snake in the grass. I heard from your shadow spirit friend that you were wanting these, and Thor has been insisting that I write you, so there. I am no longer in your debt.  _ And then, at the bottom of the paper, a sketch of a face wearing a familiar horned helmet. The tickets themselves had the name Sídhe’s Express written at the top in bold lettering, and in smaller letters under that, “one way ride”. There was no seat number that Harley could find, but there was a car number (4) as well as the destination name (Station Six: The Eastern Wastes- The Nation Of Wakanda). 

It was strange to see magic happen so blatantly in the human world, but Harley zipped his backpack up and set it at the foot on his bed as he continued to get ready to go to sleep. 

  
  
  
  


When Harley woke up back in the spirit realms, he was still in the armchair next to Spider’s sickbed, a canvas messenger bag sitting on his lap. A quick rummage through it revealed that it contained many of the things in his mechanic backpack from home, such as the train tickets, as well as a set of toiletries, a full canteen, and a couple of breakfast bars. The weight of the star was back in his pocket as well, and he quickly slid it into the bag. May was back in the room, typing something on a computer at one of the counters. When Harley got up to swing his new bag over his head and shoulder, she turned around to greet him with a smile, albeit a tight one. 

“Sky, you’re here. It’s good to see you. Good timing too, I just finished up what I was doing.”

Harley eyed the hospital bed with a frown. “He still hasn’t woken up yet?”

“He still hasn’t woken up yet,” May confirmed. “But everything is steady, and physically the cuts are a lot better. Benefits of magic and a healing factor, I suppose.” She moved over to the bed and sat lightly on the corner of the nightstand, combing her fingers through Spider’s hair almost unconsciously. 

“And what about the curse breakers?” Harley asked. “Have they said anything yet?”

“I’ve got someone on the case, but she didn’t seem too confident, especially when I mentioned that it was the Winter Soldier’s spellwork. She came to see him after you left yesterday and said she would sleep on it, but I haven’t heard back from her yet. So,” May paused, sighing heavily. “Presumably, she’s had about as much luck as us.” 

Harley rubbed the canvas of his messenger bag and doubted what May had just said. “Oh, by the way,” Harley said, as if he’d just thought of it and hadn’t been hyper-fixating on it for hours. “What would you say about going into town for just a little while today? I’m sure I can get the Mechanic to agree, and you were talking about not getting days off yesterday, so I’m sure you need it.” 

May looked at him suspiciously. “Why has this come up? It’s very sudden, and I’m almost certain you have better things to do.”

“Well, Spider was talking about the town nearby,” Harley lied, “and he said that we ought to go sometime and look around. There were some places he wanted to show me and stuff, but then he had that mission, and now this, so we never really got to it, and I’m not sure when we’d have a chance to at this point.” He shot pitiful eyes at her. “Besides, this has all been rather stressful, and it seems a bit out of our hands now. I dunno about you, but I know that if I stuck around, I would just stand around worrying instead of getting any work done, so I think it would be nice to get out of here for a little while,” he needled.  _ God _ he was thankful that fae technically couldn’t lie, and he hoped with all his heart that for just a couple moments May would forget that Harley  _ could _ .

“Fine, we can go, but only if you get permission from Stark first,” May conceded, and Harley breathed a mental sigh of relief. 

“Don’t worry about that, May! He owes me.” He stuck out her tongue at her. “How are we getting there though? You can set that up while I go ask him?”

“We can drive. I’ll pop down and ask Happy if I can borrow his car while you go ask Stark, alright? We can meet out on the grounds, over by the parking lot.” 

“Sounds good to me,” Harley said with a shrug. He didn’t actually know where the parking lot was, but he was sure he could figure it out. As soon as May left the room he went through the bag and removed the nutrition bars. He wasn’t sure if those counted as faerie food, but he wasn’t going to risk it. Water drunk in the faerie world had been discovered to be safe almost a week ago, so he kept that on him just in case. Besides, he was in this realm upwards of eight hours a night, and had never felt hungry before, and that was unlikely to change now. 

He set them on the nightstand next to Spider and then stood up, leaving through the main door of the medbay towards the work quarters before going outside to meet May. Because he obviously wasn’t actually going to ask the Mechanic for permission to go into town—if he did, there was a possibility of not being allowed, which was not at all ideal. As he walked towards the work quarters, he fidgeted with the bead on his ear cuff as he thought about what he ought to bring. As previously mentioned, he now had his own bed in the compound, and thus a place to store any possessions he had gained in the faerie realms. He wasn’t actually sure what might be useful to bring, however. 

From underneath the bed he dug out a cardboard box the kitchens had let him have in return for helping them unpack some ingredients. Inside were the little trinkets and such he had received from any spirit he had helped out, even unintentionally. Apparently it was common for trades like this to take place, as fae could automatically match value to items and services, so unlike humans, there was no need for currency.

To the front of his bag he put an enamel pin of two small, five-petalled white flowers with yellow centers, he had been told were called alyssum by the nymph that gave them to him. Put a hagstone in his pocket, a dried four-leaf clover into the pocket with the train tickets. An obsidian crystal went on a long chain around his neck, so that it was hidden under his shirt and hoodie. Then he tied a bit of red silk around his wrist, a bracelet with a wooden fish and a silver horn charm on it, just for safety’s sake. Harley had learned his lesson, and now he was nothing if not careful. Possibly quite literally nothing, in fact. As he pictured an unbreakable forcefield around him to keep himself safe, a forcefield enhanced by a healthy dose of general good luck, he absentmindedly fingered his ear cuff, and smiled. 

And on second thought, he took out a few of the gifts that were a bit smaller and easier to have on him, in case he had to pay for something. Little things, like an acorn, some glass beads, a walnut, an empty oyster with gleaming mother-of-pearl. 

Harley figured it had been long enough for him to have supposedly convinced the old man to let them go out for once, so he had Friday take him down to the parking lot. It was surprisingly small, outside on the grounds of the compound, and stretching out from it the road into the woods. More surprising was the fact that the light blue car May was leaning on was the one of the only cars parked there. Harley had expected the place, especially as the lot was so small, to be at least mostly filled up, but there were only three cars that he could see. 

May smiled upon seeing him leave the elevator with a spring in his step, standing back up and taking a step forward. “We good to go then?” She asked. 

“You know it,” he said with a smirk. “Told ya I could get the Mechanic to agree.”

She sighed, tired but amused. “You sure did. Get in, the drive is an hour long, and we want to actually spend time there before the sun comes up.”

  
  
  
  


As they drove through the forest, the sky became lighter and lighter, until it looked like midday, and what should have been the moon shined as brightly as the sun. Wispy white clouds drifted through the sky, and behind them were pinhole stars that were barely visible in the aquamarine sky. The forest was grand, and the trees themselves a mishmash of seasons—some sporting yellow-white blossoms, some with golden and red leaves, some perfectly green or just budding, and some completely bare-branched. Tinkling bells and wind chimes were hung on a couple branches, even on trees far off the path, but the wind of the car surrounded Harley and May with cheerful ringing as they drove along. 

The town was, expectedly, beautiful, like something out of an open world video game. As the car emerged from the woods, they were met, first with the sight of small houses painted with bright colors, and then as they drove further into town, shops and bakeries and cafes. Everything was still surrounded by the forest, roads curving around ancient oak trees with ribbons and paper cranes and flowers hanging from its branches. Coffee shops with huge open windows were surrounded by forest brush, briars, and wildflowers like dandelions and violets. Seashells hung in the doorways of small libraries, and in the dark alleyways between shops there were lanterns and laundry hung on the same line from the apartments above. 

On one corner lurked a handful of scrawny children with pointy ears and large eyes, sporting a plethora of shiny piercings and shifting, neon tattoos, which stood out against their dark skin. The tallest flipped a dazzling golden coin that drew Harley’s eye, but his entrapture was broken when a man walking by, equally drawn in, tripped and landed hard on the sidewalk, drawing raucous laughter from the children. Then, as if they had never been there, they all withdrew into a shadow and disappeared. 

A young looking girl wearing black clothes and with skin studded with jet feathers was perched on top of a traffic light, cawing at passing cars. Appearing from inside a bookshop, an older man with pale gray wings and wearing old-fashioned Victorian style clothing disappeared into an equally old-fashioned car. Down the street, a mountain nymph with a bright orange windbreaker helped pick up groceries for an old woman with round glasses and too-large eyes, and, as Harley watched, tried to pocket one of the lady’s oranges before getting hit in the shins by the older spirit’s cane. Everything was completely different from Rose Hill, Tennessee, and Harley couldn’t help but be completely enamoured. 

May took him through town, pointing out bakeries she knew, or her favorite sandwich shop, and dragged Harley through trinket shops that reminded him of tourist traps in big cities. These, though, instead of shelves of identical shot glasses and magnets and tacky t-shirts, held contents that would make any witch (or thirteen year old girl) squeal with happiness. Tiny corked glass bottles in different shapes with empty labels, and dream catchers whose strings and beads gleamed with nightmares they had already caught. Little wooden boxes of glass beads or cocktail cherries, quartz and opals strung on white silk ribbons. May took a caramel from the bowl at the counter for a petal from her carnation while Harley hunted through the aisles. 

After some consideration, he brought a round, foggy-white translucent glass bead on a black silk yarn to the counter. There was a loop on one end of the string and the other had a glazed knot so that it could be worn as a bracelet. May helped him pay the balding man with four arms at the counter a few dimes and a perfect red maple leaf he had found on the ground on the way home from school that afternoon.  _ Hope Abbie likes it _ , he thought to himself.  _ Seems like the kind of thing she would want, at least. _

The two continued wandering through town, Harley keeping half an eye out for the train station. Finally, they reached the town square, where in the center, instead of a fountain or any such thing you might find in a human town square, there was a stone spire with a set of doors in the middle. A couple feet away there was a pole sticking out of the ground with a single white button on it. 

“This is the sky train center,” May told him as they passed by, slowing down somewhat. “The entire station is at the top of that elevator, stops and trains and everything.”

“That’s so cool!” Harley changed course, circling the spire instead. “And you said it could travel between realms?” He looked at her inquisitively.

She nodded as she followed behind. “Yes, but I don’t know much about how it works. There’s probably more information up in the station.” May glanced at the puppy eyes Harley was shooting at her and sighed. “And yeah, you can go up to look around, but be back down quick, because I genuinely cannot be bothered to join you.”

Harley grinned cheerfully, hiding his sly smile behind genuine happiness. “Great! Thank you  _ so much _ , May, you’re the best!” He pressed the button on the pole and the elevator arrived in a matter of seconds, the metal doors sliding open. “See you soon,” he said, and waved as the doors closed.

May waited outside the station on a bench after trading herself a bowl of ice cream from a nearby vendor. After over an hour had passed and she was starting to wonder how long she would be sitting here waiting, a piece of paper folded into a messy airplane fell out of the sky, bruising it’s pointed nose on the pavement. It’s intention called her name, and she hurried to it, snatching it up and unfolding it quickly to see the scrawny handwriting. 

_ Hey May, this is Sky. I dropped this over the edge of the boarding platform, which is super awesome by the way, but I really hope you got it. Just letting you know you can stop waiting for me because at this point I’m not coming back down unless I somehow get tickets back here which? Unlikely, to be honest. Don’t worry, I have Ink with me, and a bunch of protection charms that I’m honestly surprised you didn’t notice. Oh, I’m running out of room, uh, yeah you can go back to the compound because I’m about to get on a train headed for the wastes. Sorry for lying to you, but I really think I can help Spider.  _

And then, squeezed in at the very bottom of the paper:  _ ~Sky :) _

She let the piece of paper flutter to the ground, where the wind instantly swept it up and into a nearby trash can. Walking over to it, she also threw away her bowl and spoon, before shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket and walking away. May should have known- after all, humans can’t be trusted any more than fae can. 

  
  
  
  


The elevator flew upwards, and within a couple of moments he was in a station he couldn’t see from the ground. Harley gripped the stone in his pocket a little tighter and looked around, first walking over to one of the windows. Outside he only saw clear, deep blue sky, and below him, sweeping wispy clouds. Checking one of the screens, which showed all the different trains and when they would arrive at or leave the station, he found his train and when it would depart, as well as which platform he was supposed to go to. Before he went up to the platform however (his train was leaving in just under an hour, he’d be  _ fine _ ), he got a piece of paper from a faerie at the desk and scribbled a note to May using a borrowed pen. After all, Harley didn’t want her to be waiting for him forever. Once he had finished, he handed back the pen along with an acorn, and folded up the paper into an airplane, starting to walk towards the stairs. 

Peering over the edge of the platform, which seemed to just be a concrete block floating in midair, he couldn’t even see details on the ground. At this point, he was pretty sure this was the highest up he’d  _ ever _ been, including that time he had been on an airplane when he was eight. 

As he peered over the edge of the platform, the train rushed into the station with a gust of wind, blowing Harley’s hair into his face. It was red and black and yellow, the two windows in the front looking like a pair of eyes, and it whistled loudly as it pulled into the station. Harley pulled out the note and furrowed his eyebrows, thinking as hard about May as he could—her essence, her carnation, and despite knowing absolutely nothing about magic, the airplane honed onto May, far down below. Then, watching what looked like a wisp of steel swirl off the paper, he let it fall, and fall, and fall.

The other spirits on the platform rushed to the door until Harley was the last in line, and the door opened to show the faceless train conductor. Looking around, he realized that all the spirits were faceless, looking more like translucent shadows than the beautiful and ornate fae in the compound. Even the conductor seemed to be merely a ghost, faceless but still in his blue and gold buttoned uniform. The spirits were mostly silent, though they rustled and whispered to themselves. 

When Harley approached the front of the line, the conductor held out a hand and he placed the tickets into it. With a glance, he read over the tickets and checked to make sure it was only Harley and Ink getting on before stamping the tickets, giving them back, and walking away, allowing them to board the train. The inside was nothing like any train Harley had been on before; the seats were soft red benches placed around wooden tables, with a wide aisle in the middle so that people could walk back and forth. There were poles and rings for people standing up, though the train was pretty empty, and luggage racks overhead, some of which were already full. The windows showed the clear blue sky, displaying how high up they were, numbers above every door indicating which car you were in. 

Double checking the ticket, Harley made his way to car 4 and made his way to one of the tables, sitting down just as the train began moving. The train moved through the sky, Harley catching a glimpse of thick white steam through the window, drifting out from under the train. With nothing else to do, Harley stared out the window, quickly captivated by the sky. The train quickly moved out of the bubble of daylight that surrounded the town, blue skies fading into navy and the pitch black, studded with the jewels of unfamiliar constellations. Bored, he began to examine the stars, connecting them into pictures and constellations that he made up stories for, trying to pass the time. After some time, multicolored sparks of light began to surround the train like little fireflies, drifting through the sky, and as they did so the sky began to change colors again. 

This time, the change was gradual and soft, the midnight turning into a twilight, accented with gray-blue clouds. Soon the sky was shot through with streaks of dusty pink and purple and orange, a line of fluffy gold marking the sunrise floating over the horizon. The train descended slowly into cloud cover, a white trail drifting behind the as the sky finally settled on the pillowy pink of dawn. 

Below the clouds, Harley could finally see a huge sea of thin-stemmed mushrooms growing out of the ground like trees and drifting side to side in the wind like kelp in the tide. They were deep purple with pointed heads, and some had creamy white spots bulging out of them. Below these was a second canopy of curling silvery-green ferns, taller than any trees Harley had ever seen, the individual leaves covered in a light colored fuzz. They blocked Harley’s view of the ground, but he still caught glimpses of dark colored, flat toadstools below that. Huge gray pods of insects that looked a bit like rolly-pollies with twelve shiney blue eyes and two pairs of giant, foggy white wings flew through the air in swarms. Some were the size of busses, and others the size of cars, and they buzzed through the air from mushroom to mushroom. 

The train sped to a station platform high in the air, floating above the swaying mushroom heads with an elevator door sticking out of it, and the words “ _ Station 2: Valley Of The Wind- Exploration 2.0” _ flashed into existence on the glass of every window. Harley glanced back at his ticket and sighed—four more stations to go. 

And so, the hours passed by, each realm passing by like water under a bridge. With rust red and lavender skies came streams of fire licking upwards from the mountains towards dark clouds, and dragons the size of butterflies fluttering in swarms by the windows like curious children. There was a delay for upwards of an hour in a world covered in water because the station was on a massive turtle with grass and trees growing out of it’s back like an island, and they couldn’t find the station. Between each realm, multicolored sparks came and danced around the train, tapping on windows and seeming to play with Ink as they worked their magic, transporting them from one sky to another. 

  
  
  
  


Finally, the train pulled out of station five: a seemingly endless salt flat mirror, out of which poked occasional dark rocks and tiny scuttling crabs. The train had lowered itself to the ground for this once, the platform a simple concrete structure floating a couple feet above the water with an elevator sitting on it. The deep orange-blue sunset began to fade like an old photograph, and gradually lightened to a golden yellow. 

They lifted back up off the ground and into the air, into the piercing light of the sun, and then through it. The land flew by in gorgeous rolling green hills tall enough to be called mountains, and the train seemed to follow a river that wound cheerfully through the landscape. Straight ahead, Harley watched the city that they were approaching. Saw the towers that shot out of the ground in dark metallic layers, the way that the sunlight gleamed off the tiled walls of houses. In the center of the city, which Harley supposed was Wakanda, a palace of spires and pointed archways, with swirling staircases of trees surrounding the base of each tower. The roads of the city were dust-orange, and the whole city was studded with green trees. 

Harley got off the train and took the elevator down to the ground, where the actual building of the station was. Soon, he was out on the streets, just wandering around the place. Wakanda was a beautiful city, and Harley walked randomly down streets just going towards things he thought looked cool, peeking down alleyways, until he found himself following the river towards the palace. The tiny path he was on led down what looked like a subway tunnel at the base of the palace, and it continued to look like one until he hit a dead end and almost walked into the wall. Instead of hitting the stone and going splat like he by all means should have, Harley stepped through the stone and took the hidden stairs back above ground. 

Looking around at the trees and the small pond across which there were a handful of thatched huts, it finally occurred to him that maybe he should have asked someone where the Winter Soldier was. Surely some of the people in the city would have known where the assassin was, especially if he was as well known as May had implied. 

_ Oh well _ , Harley thought, looking behind himself and seeing no trace of stairs leading out of the ground.  _ Too late now, I guess. _

A couple boys, maybe a few years younger than Harley himself, ran by, all laughing cheerfully. They all looked, as far as he could tell, completely human—dark skinned and a bit scrawny, barefoot on the soft grass. The last one in the cluster ran past him, seemed to do a double take, and turned around to look at him. 

“Hey mister,” the boy said cheerfully in accented english. Harley recognized it as the same one the princess at the festival last month had, and by now he was fairly certain that it wasn’t in anyway an accent any human language would make. “You lost?”

Harley looked side to side, instinctually trying to figure out if he knew where he was, even though he also knew full well that he was lost. “Uhh, yeah. Do you know where the Winter Soldier is? I mean, well, I dunno what he looks like, maybe a giant wolf? With a black prosthetic arm?”

“Oh! White Wolf! Guys,” he called over his shoulder to the group of boys, who jogged towards them. “This guy’s looking for mister White Wolf, is he still around?”

The boys muttered among themselves. “Yeah,” one of them piped up. “He came back with the goats like half an hour ago, he should be back in his hut.” They pointed Harley towards one of the huts across the lake, and told showed him the path so that he could actually get there. He thanked them for their help, let them go back off to do whatever they were doing, and set off across the lake. 

A couple of goats nosed the ground in front of the small mud hut, seemingly looking for something to eat. As Harley watched, walking towards it, a younger goat wandered away from the hut and towards the pond, making its way along the bank. Suddenly, a stone it was standing on wobbled, and a great white blur sped out of the hut and caught the goat by the scruff of its neck, just as it was about to fall in the pond. The huge white wolf was standing with one leg in the water, but quickly brought the kid back to dry land, shaking it gently in reprimand. The wolf’s left front leg was a metallic black prosthetic with a painted white star. 

“Uhh, Mr. White Wolf, sir? Winter Soldier?” Harley called out as he jogged forward. At the second name, the wolf’s head whipped around towards him in suspicion. Upon seeing Harley, however, he reared up and shifted into a human form—a pale-skinned man with brown hair tied back in a functional ponytail, scruff on his chin, and a prosthetic arm. Harley supposed that even if you could shapeshift, you would still be missing a limb no matter what form you took. 

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. He didn’t smile, but his posture visibly relaxed, as did his voice. “Come on in; I’ve been expecting you.” The shapeshifter turned and opened the door to the hut, walking inside with Harley hurrying to follow him. 

There didn’t seem to be any magic at play, here. The inside of the hut was dim, and no bigger than it had seemed on the outside, though there was a surprising amount of things in the one room. Near the front there was a fireplace set into the wall with a silver pot above it, and in front of it there was a round wooden table with three chairs. In the back of the room there was a bed with a colorful curtain that could be pulled in front of it for privacy, but was currently tied back. 

Sitting on that bed was another spirit, clean-shaven and with dirty blond hair, pale skin, square jaw, and piercing blue eyes. Like the other spirits he had seen in this small clearing, this simple settlement around a pond, this man-shaped spirit could have passed perfectly for human. He was cleaning a circular shield with a rag, but looked up when the wolf came in the door. 

“Hey punk, the kid’s here,” The wolf spirit called as he walked into the hut, tossing the short brown cloak he had been wearing onto a chair. Harley paused uncertainly by the doorway, fidgeting with the charms on his bracelet. 

The other spirit, presumably the “Captain” May had told him about, got up and put the shield and rag on the bed before coming to stand near the table. “Stark’s, right?” At the Wolf’s answering nod, he turned his attention to Harley. “Go ahead and have a seat, son. We have plenty of things to talk about.” 

Harley sat in one of the chairs that didn’t have clothing on it, but instead of sitting as well, the Captain nodded at him before going to the fire and starting to boil water, pulling out mugs and such. The wolf went over as well, barely sparing Harley a glance, and brushed a hand over the Captain’s back as he helped him make tea. Neither spoke, so Harley remained silent as well, just fidgeting nervously in his seat as he waited for them to finish. Both moved alongside each other as if in a dance, neither going to do the same action, neither cancelling the other out. The Captain boiled water, and the wolf poured it into mugs with teabags in that the Captain had already gotten ready.

One was slid across the table to him, and he accepted it with a nod, and though he didn’t drink, he did inhale deeply the scent of earl gray, chocolate, lavender, and raspberry. Harley made a note to try and imitate the blend when he eventually got home, though he had no idea when that might be. In a normal night, he would have fallen asleep by now, would have taken the potion and gone home in time for school the next morning. But then again, one thing almost every story agreed on was that time moves differently in other realms than it does in the human realm. He could have just missed his alarm, or be missing for a week. Harley supposed it didn’t matter much now. 

When it was clear that Harley wasn’t going to drink his tea, Inkblot slid down his shoulder and into his mug, swirling through the creamy tan like cream through coffee. Their eyespots gleamed, and they chirped cheerfully. 

Then, the Captain sat down across from him at the table, the Wolf half leaning and half sitting on the table itself, both nursing their own mugs. Harley awkwardly avoided both of their gazes, and mentally decided the observing the dark wood grain of the table was better than starting a conversation with these two spirits he had just met. 

“Kid,” the wolf said, breaking the silence that had begun pressing down on them. “Did you come here for a reason or what?”

“Oh, uh—” Harley cleared his throat and quickly dug through his bag for the star. “Um, yeah. I think this belongs to you? I’m real sorry it was taken from you. My friend Spider had it, but I guess you put a curse on it or something to keep it from getting stolen because now he’s really sick. I dunno why he had it, but if I give it back to you can you please take the curse off?”

“Oh,” The wolf murmured quietly, exchanging a surprised glance with the captain. “I almost forgot about that curse.”

The captain smiled at Harley gently. “Keep the star for now; I’m sure Stark needed it for a good reason if he was willing to risk the boy to get it. We forgave him a long time ago, and it’s fair if he doesn’t trust us yet, but we trust him. Honestly, he could have just asked for it. As for the curse—” he gestured towards the wolf with his head and the shapeshifter nodded. 

“I made it to be broken by acts of true love.” He shrugged, the corner of his lips twisting into a smile. “Cliche, I know, but effective enough. True love is surprisingly rare, the punk can sense it, and it wouldn’t really affect either of us. Either way, that curse is definitely broken by now.” 

Harley frowned at him. “How do you mean?”

The Wolf looked at him with an  _ ‘are you serious’ _ kind of expression. “Are you serious?” He asked. “You essentially saved your friend from me— sorry about that by the way— and then came all the way here with no means of natural transportation or magic, just for the smallest  _ chance _ of saving him. You saw me that night, you knew I could have killed you, but you still came to return my star. I can’t even sense love, but if that’s not an act of it, my entire life is a lie.”

“And I  _ can _ sense it,” the Captain told him, cheerfully ignoring the red spreading across Harley’s face like mold over a days-old sandwich. “The curse is broken.”

Suddenly, the White Wolf tensed and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor. Some of the tea in Harley’s still-full mug sloshed out, and he hurried to pick it up out of the mess. After an agonizing couple of seconds, he relaxed, and stood up straighter with a smile. 

“Our other guest has arrived,” he announced to the room, and sat back down. “Can you get the door, kid? I’ll take the tea off your hands, ‘specially if you aren’t going to drink it.” 

“Uh, yeah?” Harley said, glad that he didn’t have to respond to the whole ‘ _ loving Spider _ ’ thing. “Sure, I guess.” He handed the tea back to White Wolf, who immediately sipped it with a smile at Ink’s indignant squeak, and got up from the table to see who was outside. 

  
  
  
  


May stepped quietly out of the work quarters, Friday taking her down to medical without her having to say a word. She hadn’t been able to fall asleep out of worry, but she resolved to only check on Peter before going to sleep for real this time. After all, she couldn’t help others if she didn’t get enough rest herself. Her mind wandered to how Sky was going to get home without the potion, but she broke the train of thought as soon as she caught it. It wouldn’t to do worry about that now, and he had made his choice. The morning sun shone brightly through the huge windows of the compound, and she brought one of her hands up to shade her eyes. 

The compound was quiet, everyone either asleep or being as careful as she was. With a smooth whir, something she had never noticed when the compound was bustling and loud, the elevator doors opened. May made her way down the hall to room seven, moving to sit in the chair next to Peter’s bed with a sigh. She ruffled gently through his curls with one hand before moving it back to her lap. 

“Hey sweetpea,” she murmured. “You choose your prizes pretty carefully, huh? Look at how far that boy’s willing to go for you, he even tricked your old aunt May.”

“What’s he done this time?” Peter asked under his breath. 

“He’s gone off on the train, towards— wait, PETER BEnjamin Parker!” She yelled, lowering her volume to a barely-there whisper on the last two words. “Wake the hell up, you’ve got me worried sick, young man.”

Peter blinked all eight of his eyes open, rubbing at them blearily. “Hey May. What do you mean?”

“Don’t you ‘what do you mean’ me, I don’t play that game,” she whispered furiously. “You’ve been out for a good three days since you came back a week late from your missions beaten and bloody, not to mention cursed to all hell.”

He sat up and shook the hair out of his face, wincing as it pulled on the bandages wrapped around his stomach. “I don’t—I don’t remember coming back from— where’s Sky?”

May literally hissed with displeasure. “Of course you don’t remember, according to Sky you were completely feral when he found you, you know how it gets after a bad mission. Now the boy’s gone off to find the Winter Soldier, of all spirits, with that star you stole. You know you can decline Stark’s missions, you don’t have to go on ones that are that dangerous you idiot!”

“Wait— what?? Where’s Sky gone off to?” 

“Your boy’s a little trickster,” May admitted. “He fooled me into taking him into town, and then he got on a sky train to the Wastes. I’m not sure where he got the tickets, goodness knows they’re impossible to find.”

“You sure? That’s where he went?” Peter furrowed his eyebrows. 

“Nope, don’t you dare.” May lurched forwards and grabbed onto Peter’s shoulders. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, and to summarize my response;  _ No way in hell _ . You just woke up, and there’s not a  _ chance _ that you’re running off before you’ve gotten properly checked up. Go the hell back to sleep, you ain’t going nowhere.”

“But  _ May _ ,” he whined. 

“Nope. Nuh uh, you’re staying right here. I’m staying right here until you go back to sleep.” 

Peter pouted and flopped back into a sleeping position, splaying himself across the bed. “Jeez, okay. Jeez.” He side-eyed May, who settled back into the chair next to his bed, her head leaned back against the wall so that she could watch him. “Well, is there like, water or something? Can I get a cup of water, please?”

With a tired yawn, May clicked her fingers and summoned a glass of water from her bedside back in the work quarters. She really needed to get some sleep. “Nice try sweetheart, but again. I don’t play your games.” She took a sip herself before sliding it across the table, Peter drinking sheepishly, before closing her eyes as she leaned back. “Seriously, Pete. Get some sleep.”

The lock on the window sprung open silently with a flick of Spider’s fingers as he lay in bed.  _ Time to play the waiting game _ , he thought to himself. “You seem tired too, May. And you have work tomorrow, you should get some rest too.” Within minutes, Peter was scrambling out the window, his blanket over May’s shoulders. 

Now outside the compound, he tried to shift back into his true form— what he had used in order to travel to Wakanda last time. As soon as the shift started though, he winced in pain as he felt the cuts on his legs crack into bleeding fissures in his collapsing exoskeleton, so he stopped the shift and stuck to humanoid. Instead, he put a hand on the wall of the compound. 

“FRIDAY, could you grab my suit for me please?” He asked, seemingly talking to thin air. 

“Of course, Spider-Man,” FRIDAY answered, and within seconds the gleaming red metal of his suit was crawling up his arm. Peter noticed that FRIDAY had perceptively given him the most comfortable suit, and he blinked gratefully. 

“Awesome, you’re great FRI. Let Mister Stark know I’m up and off to run some errands when he wakes up, please,” he said, and bounded off towards the nearest natural portal. He had a good feeling about this one. 

  
  
  
  


Harley opened the hut’s wooden door and was greeted to the sight of Spider, in his suit with the mask pulled off, standing just outside. 

When he launched himself forward and pulled Spider into a tight hug, hooking his chin over the spirit’s shoulder, he was suddenly incredibly glad that he was no longer holding the tea. Immediately, Harley felt arms wrapping around him and Spider’s curls brush his cheek. After some time, he let go of Spider and looked him up and down, though he couldn’t see any of his injuries because of the suit. 

“Are you okay?” Spider asked, carefully. 

“I should be asking you that! Are you feeling alright, how are you awake?”

Spider shook his head. “No, I mean—” he reached out and brushed his thumb across Harley’s cheek, cupping his chin with his hand. Belatedly, Harley noticed the moisture that had gathered at the corners of his eyes before spilling down his cheeks, and swiped at his face impatiently. 

“I’m fine, just- just come inside, you huge idiot.” Harley linked their fingers with a smile, ducked his face quickly into his sleeve when he felt more tears slipping down his face. Spider grinned helplessly after him as he was pulled along into the hut. 

  
  
  
  


Later on, after Spider had apologized to the White Wolf in person, after the two spirits had brought them to the Wakandan palace, after the princess had offered them a place to stay before returning to the compound the next day, they lay in bed. Side by side, in a guest room at the palace, they lay. Harley’s bag slumped from where it leaned against the foot of the bed and clattered to the ground. His breath huffed into the crook of Spider’s neck, dampening the skin there, and one hand brushed over the clean bandages on his torso. 

“May’s gonna be so pissed when we get back,” he commented. “I can’t believe you pretty much just leaped out of bed to come get me. How the hell did you even get here?”

“I can sense natural portals in the area,” Spider said, twitching under Harley’s wandering fingers. “Quit it, that tickles.”

Harley quit it. “But can you tell where the portals go?”

“Not… really? But they feel good or bad, so I can kinda tell if I would want to go through them. It only took like two jumps to get here, this time. The first go took so long because apparently my powers decided I didn’t actually want to get here, and it took days before I realized the jumps were just leading back to the compound over and over.” 

“That’s weird,” Harley decided, and snuggled closer. Spider snickered lightly.

“Yeah, I guess.” A pause. “So, how’d you break the curse?”

A red flush immediately spread across Harley’s cheeks, and he swore Spider could feel how warm his skin was becoming. Still, he refused to move away. “Well, uh, I like you or something, and that wolf guy said that broke the curse, I guess.”

Spider moved his head just enough to make eye-contact with Harley, their foreheads still touching. “You like me or something?” He asked, raising his eyebrows. With most of his eyes closed and only the brown ones still open, he looked almost human. 

“Uh, yeah?” Harley muttered hesitantly, eyes darting away from Spider’s. 

With a soft smile, Spider brought a hand up to cup Harley’s face. “Well,” he said. “You’re lucky I like you or something back.”

Their lips met. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yessssss they finally kiss for real!
> 
> Again, super duper sorry part two was late.... hope you enjoyed! Again, this turned out way longer than I expected lmao. If you caught the cameos, lemme know so I can talk fandoms with you :) and if you didn’t, leave a comment or some kudos anyways haha
> 
> There will still be an epilogue, but maybe not for a little bit. You know how it is, I’m busy and kinda a slow writer. Keep an eye out though <3 
> 
> And if you’ve read this far, love ya! Hope you have an amazing rest of your week, you’re fabulous!


	3. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We wrap things up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look how fast I wrote that. /LOOK/ how fast I wrote that.

Harley walked to school, and then walked home. They weren’t expecting him anyhow—he had called in sick the previous night, said that he had a fever and that he hoped he’d be well enough to go to school the next day, but that those hopes weren’t high. On the way home he called for Abbie as well, feigning a cough as he spoke. 

“I know this is last minute,” he told them, “but I got sick last night and Abbie seems to have caught it. Her fever isn’t too high yet but it’s climbing and I don’t want to send her to school sick and have whatever this is spread around.” The school, of course, agreed. It was about fever season, and they wanted to avoid fever, or strep throat, or whatever to get around the school. Last year around this time, some classes were half empty to sickness, let along Thanksgiving break right on the horizon.

As he walked, a perfect orange-red maple leaf drifted out of the air and into the hood of his sweatshirt. It was the only autumn leaf around, and there were no maples in the area. Around him, the wind blew a little stronger, and every wind chime in Harley’s vicinity set to twinkling merrily. He picked it out with a smile and tucked it in his pocket, but didn’t look around, only rolled his shoulders back and kept on walking. 

Even with his eyes forward, Harley saw a stream of darkness with tiny gleaming eyespots wind around the metal tube of a chime before wisping away in the breeze. As he arrived back at his house, he saw the car in the driveway begin to pull away, and he quickly ducked behind the neighbor’s shrubbery as Tristan drove off in the opposite direction. Once the silver car was out of side, he darted forward gleefully and pulled the front door open. 

Exchanging the books in his backpack for clean clothes, toiletries, and a few sentimental keepsakes didn’t take too long. Besides, he had already packed his Mechanic bag last night, with the Phantom Tollbooth, tupperware that held their lunch, a first aid kit, various charging stuff for their electronics, and the bus tickets. He hadn’t been able to beg birth certificates or medical records from their mom, but he had packed their passports just in case. Abbie had opted to pack last night when he had told her of his plans, and had just hidden her school things away. 

Harley heard the door unlock downstairs and peered out the window to see if he would need to hide. Upon seeing who it was, he practically leaped down the stairs with Abbie’s other bag in hand, and grinned at her as she came in the door. 

“Abbie! I got your things, let’s go.”

Sensing the mood, Abbie laughed. “Hey dumbass. You sure you have everything?” At Harley’s nod, she continued skeptically. “Toothbrush and toothpaste? Socks? Water? Our lunch? Our fucking bus tickets? Money?”

“I packed that yesterday!” He grabbed her wrist as she scrambled to put on her favorite scarf, hanging by the door. “Come on, if we don’t catch the bus, then we’ll be late downtown, and we won’t catch the grayhound, and we’ll never get to New York!”

They giggled hysterically with joyful relief as they ran down the sidewalk towards the bus stop down the street. To finally be free, especially after anticipation and planning on the scale that Harley had for months— it felt like flying, like finally leaving the nest. 

The bus driver was friendly and gave them the student discount even though Harley elected to pay with cash, and drove them downtown where a second bus would take them out of Rose Hill and to Jackson. Once there, the siblings made their way to the grayhound station and got checked in. They were there over an hour early, as planned, so the two were able to grab a seat as well as their bearings before the boarding line began to form. 

Wanting to stay mostly away from people, Harley and Abbie boarded first and stayed near the very front of the bus. Abbie reckoned it was safer to stay near the bus driver, and Harley agreed— besides, this way they could get on and off the bus more quickly. Once some of their luggage was put away overhead, Harley took a look around for somewhere to sit.

At the very front of the bus sat a boy who looked about Harley’s age, in a row of three by the end. He had a head of very familiar curls, flowering vine tattoos crawled up his wrists, and he was wearing a red sweatshirt with a black spider graphic on it with the sleeves rolled up. The boy’s eyes were closed, and he had black headphones on. 

“We should probably sit next to that kid, huh?” Harley whispered in Abbie’s ear. “Better to not risk ending up next to someone weird and creepy.” At her nod of agreement, he walked forward to tap the teen on the shoulder. 

“Hey, Spider! Spider hoodie!” The kid’s eyes popped open and he looked at Harley with surprise, before it turned into a fond smile. “Mind if my sister and I sit next to you?”

“Oh yeah, go ahead.” He got up to let Abbie and Harley in before sitting back down in the aisle seat. “My name is Peter, where are you guys going?”

Harley looked at him in shock before a flush spread across his cheeks. Abbie noticed and smirked. “Uh, I’m Harley, and this is my sister Abbie. We’re on our way to New York.”

Peter smiled at them. “What a coincidence, so am I! If we end up going the same way, you wanna keep sitting together?”

“Sure,” Harley shrugged, trying for nonchalant. He also pointedly ignored the small black shadow that wrapped around Peter’s neck to stare at him. Peter pulled out his phone and unpaused his music, leaning back and closing his eyes. 

Abbie elbowed him in the ribs. “Someone’s got a crush!” She teased. 

Harley couldn’t deny it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m still proud of getting this up so fast. 
> 
> Anyways, after planning everything out I realized that we still hadn’t resolved the main plot yet, so obviously I had to write a little something more. I really like this ‘verse, actually, so if you ask nicely and bribe me with lots of nice comments, I’ll write a sequel. If you do, I’ll add another chapter on just to let ya’ll know because I find it really annoying when authors don’t do that, so. 
> 
> Thanks for reading this entire shenanigan! I’m literally trash so I’m Grateful™


	4. Editing/Reupload Notice

Hey guys, fancy seeing you back here!

As some of you know (And most of you probably don’t), I was planning on writing a sequel to this fic for Christmas this year, but after plotting it, abandoned that project for a different fandom. Instead I’ve decided to go back and edit/rewrite this fic, because *eyes typos, random switches to present tense, etc*. There won’t be any major plot changes, but some sections will be reworked/clarified, and so on. That does mean no sequel this year, however :( 

anyways, this is just a notice! To everyone who asked for a sequel... not yet <3

thanks for reading this quick announcement! Feel free to return to whatever you were doing before. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you spotted all the cameos, tell me and I’ll freak out at you in the comment section. And if you didn’t, leave a comment anyways haha :P


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